1. Al l iteration The repetition of an initial consonant sound. Anaphora

The repetition of the same word or phrase at the beginning of

successive clauses or verses. (Contrast with epiphora and epistrophe.)

2. Anti thesis The juxtaposition of contrasting

ideas in balanced phrases. 3. Apostrophe Breaking off discourse to address

some absent person or thing, some abstract quality, an inanimate object, or a nonexistent character.

4. Assonance Identity or s imilarity in sound between internal vowels in

neighboring words. 5. Chiasmus

A verbal pattern in which the second half of an expression is ba lanced against the first but with the parts reversed. 6. Euphemism The substitution of an inoffensive term for one considered offensively explicit. 7. Hyperbole An extravagant statement; the use of exaggerated terms for the purpose of emphasis or

heightened effect. 8. Irony

The use of words to convey the opposite of their l iteral meaning. A s tatement or s ituation where the

meaning i s contradicted by the appearance or presentation of the idea. 9. Li totes A figure of speech consisting of an understatement in which an affi rmative is expressed by negating i ts opposite. 10. Metaphor

An implied comparison between two unl ike things that actually have something important in

common. 11. Metonymy

A figure of speech in which one word or phrase is substituted for another with which it i s closely

associated; a lso, the rhetorical

s trategy of describing something indirectly by referring to things around i t. 12. Onomatopoeia

The use of words that imitate the sounds associated with the

objects or actions they refer to. 13. Oxymoron A figure of speech in which

incongruous or contradictory terms appear s ide by s ide.

14. Paradox A s tatement that appears to contradict itself.

15. Personification A figure of speech in which an inanimate object or abstraction is endowed with human qualities or

abi lities. 16. Pun A play on words, sometimes on

di fferent senses of the same word and sometimes on the similar

sense or sound of different words. 17. Simile A s tated comparison (usually formed with "like" or "as") between two fundamentally dissimilar things that have certain qualities in common. 18. Synecdoche A figure of speech in which a part i s used to represent the whole (for example, ABCs foralphabet) or the whole for a part ("England won

the World Cup in 1966"). 19. Understatement

A figure of speech in which a wri ter or a speaker deliberately makes a situation seem less

important or serious than i t is. 20. Well, son, I 'll tell you: Li fe for me ain't been no crystal s ta ir. It's had tacks in it, And splinters, And boards torn up, And places with no carpet on the floor--

Bare. (Langston Hughes, "Mother to Son")

(a) synecdoche (b) metaphor

(c) i rony (d) pun Why should white people be

running all the stores in our

community? Why should white people be running the banks of our community? Why should the economy of our community be in

the hands of the white man? Why?

(Malcolm X) (a) antithesis (b) l i totes

(c) anaphora (d) understatement

21. substituting the word “euthanasia” for “mercy killing" or "ki l ling the terminally i ll"

(a ) hyperbole (b) euphemism (c) assonance (d) oxymoron

22. I had so much homework last night that I needed a pickup truck to carry a l l my books home!

(a) synechdoche (b) onomatopoeia

(c) pun (d) hyperbole 23. Let's just say that Ms. Hilton is not the brightest bulb on the Chris tmas tree. (a) paradox (b) l i totes (c) apostrophe (d) chiasmus 24. The chug-a, chug-a, chug-a of the tra in echoed down the hill, whi le a cloud of smoke rose up to

the blue western sky. (a) s imile

(b) metonymy (c) anaphora (d) onomatopoeia

25. But the prisoner would not answer, he only lay with wide, dark, bright, eyes, like a bound animal. (D. H. Lawrence, England, My England) (a) oxymoron (b) euphemism (c) anaphora

(d) personification 26. You have a lot of work to do, so I 'll lend you a hand.

(a) assonance (b) apostrophe

(c) i rony (d) synechdoche 27. Pitching pennies with the

Pi ttsburgh Pirates in a pitter-

patter of rain outside the Pitti Pa lace. (James Thurber, Lanterns and Lances, 1961)

(a) chiasmus (b) a l literation

(c) pun (d) oxymoron 28. O Western wind, when wilt

thou blow That the small ra in down can rain?

Chris t, that my love were in my arms, And I in my bed again!

(Anonymous, "O Western Wind") (a) l itotes (b) paradox (c) apostrophe

(d) anaphora 29. The heart of a fool is in his mouth, but the mouth of a wise

man is in his heart. (Benjamin Franklin)

(a) hyperbole (b) chiasmus (c) l i totes (d) anaphora 30. We ta lked with each other about each other Though neither of us spoke — (Emi ly Dickinson) (a) metonymy (b) paradox (c) synecdoche (d) personification

31. The earth laughs beneath my heavy feet

At the blasphemy in my old jangly walk (Bi lly Corgan, "Thirty-three")

(a) euphemism (b) s imile (c) anti thesis (d) personification 32. I dig my toes into the sand. The ocean looks like A thousand diamonds s trewn Across a blue blanket. (Incubus, "Wish You Were Here")

(a) chiasmus (b) s imile (c) onomatopoeia

(d) synecdoche 33. In the sweat of thy face shalt

thou eat bread. (Genesis 3:19) (a) s imile

(b) i rony

(c) metonymy (d) assonance 34. Why do we wait until a pig is dead to cure it?

(a) pun (b) personification

(c) anaphora (d) synechdoche 35. "It was the best of times, it

was the worst of times, i t was the age of wisdom, i t was the age of

fool ishness, it was the epoch of bel ief, i t was the epoch of incredulity, i t was the season of

Light, i t was the season of Darkness, i t was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we

had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were a l l going direct the other way."

(Charles Dickens, A Ta le of Two Ci ties)

(a) antithesis (b) l i totes (c) s imile (d) understatement 36. My wishes raced through the house high hay And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, . . . (Dylan Thomas, "Fern Hill") (a ) s imile (b) i rony (c) metonymy

(d) assonance 37. And he was rich, yes, richer

than a king, And admirably schooled in every grace:

In fine--we thought that he was everything To make us wish that we were in his place. So on we worked and waited for the l ight, And went without the meat and cursed the bread,

And Richard Cory, one calm summer night, Went home and put a bullet in his

head. (E. A. Robinson, "Richard Cory")

(a) chiasmus (b) l i totes (c) anti thesis

(d) i rony

38. Prospective buyers are advised

not to rely heavily on the front brakes, which are not connected.

(advertisement for a replica 1925 Rol ls-Royce WWI Armored Car) (a) antithesis

(b) s imile (c) anaphora

(d) understatement 39. (b) metaphor 40. (c) anaphora

41. (b) euphemism 42. (d) hyperbole 43. (b) l i totes 44. (d) onomatopoeia

45. (a) oxymoron 46. (d) synechdoche 47. (b) a l literation

48. (c) apostrophe 49. (b) chiasmus

50. (b) paradox 51. (d) personification 52. (b) s imile 53. (c) metonymy 54. (a) pun 55. (a) antithesis 56. (d) assonance 57. (d) i rony 58. (d) understatement Poetry i s the expression of a thought, an idea, a concept or a s tory in a structured form which

has a flow and a music created by the sounds and syllables in i t.

Al l types of poems are often wri tten in several s tyles. These

s tyles are defined by the number of l ines in each stanza, the syl lables used in each line or the s tructures of rhyme used and so on. Here is a list of the main types of poetry commonly used by poets a l l over the world. Ba l lad: This i s an old s tyle of

wri ting poetry, which was used to tel l stories. A ballad usually has s tanzas made up of either seven

or eight or ten lines, and ends with a short four or five line s tanza.

Each s tanza ends with the same l ine, which is called 'a refrain'.

Couplet: Perhaps the most

popular type of poetry used, the couplet has s tanzas made up of two l ines which rhyme with each other.

Quatra in: This kind of poem has

four l ines in a stanza, of which the second and fourth l ines rhyme with each other and have a similar

syl lable s tructure.

Cinquain: This i s another unique type of poetry s tyle. As the name suggests, it is made up of five

l ines. The first l ine is just one word, which is often the ti tle of the poem. The second line has two words which describe the first

l ine. The third line has three words , and is mostly the action part of the poem. The fourth l ine

i s four words describing the feelings. And the fifth line, again,

has just one word which is the title of the poem. Iambic Pentameter: This is a very compl icated style of writing poetry, but was often used by classical poets. This style uses the syl lable s tresses to create the mus ical sound. There is one short sounding syllable followed by one long sounding syllable, at the end of each of the five stanzas in a

row.

Sonnet: This type of poem conta ins fourteen lines and fol lows conventional s tructures of

rhyme. Haiku: This is again a very s tructured method of writing poetry. This has i ts origins in Japan. This method does not use rhyme. There are three l ines of five, seven and five syllables each. The poem must essentially talk

about some aspect of Nature. Free Verse: This is a method of

wri ting poetry, which does not essentially follow any s tructure or

s tyle. There is no fixed meter and no s tructure regarding rhyme and l ines in each stanza. This kind of

poetry i s quite popular with

modern poets. Epic: This poem is usually a long and descriptive one which tells a

s tory. Epics usually are longer than most poems and may even take

up a book. Example: Homer's 'I l iad'.

Limerick: This i s a very witty and often vulgar kind of a poem, which

i s quite short. This poem has five l ines in a stanza. The first, second and fifth l ine have the same

metrical s tructure and they rhyme with each other. They contain seven to ten syllables each. The second and fourth l ines have the

same metrical structure and rhyme with each other. These conta in five to seven syllables.

These are by no means, all types

of poetry forms used. But these are the basics. Most poets use these forms and s tructures while wri ting their poems. The form and s tructure of the poem, ideally should not limit the thought or the idea conveyed by the poet. However, these styles of writing help make the poem more musical in i ts flow. Read more at Buzzle: http://www.buzzle.com/ar

ticles/types-of-poetry-all-the-di fferent-types-of-poems.html

In l inguistics, ellipsis (from

the Greek: ἔλλειψις, él leipsis,

"omission") or elliptical

construction refers to the

omission from a clauseof one or

more words that would otherwise

be required by the remaining

elements. There are numerous

dis tinct types of ellipsis

acknowledged in theoretical

syntax. This article provides an

overview of them. Theoretical

accounts of ellipsis can vary

greatly depending in part upon

whether a constituency-based or

a dependency-based theory of

syntactic s tructure is pursued.

Varieties of ellipsis have long

formed a central explicandum

for l inguistic theory, s ince

el liptical phenomena seem to be

able to shed light on basic

questions of form-meaning

correspondence: in particular, the

usual mechanisms of grasping a

meaning from a form seem to be

bypassed or supplanted in the

interpretation of elliptical

s tructures, ones in which there is

meaning without form.

In generative linguistics, the

term el lipsis has been applied to a

range of phenomena in which a

perceived interpretation is fuller

than that which would be

expected based solely on the

presence of linguistic forms.

One tra i t that many types and

instances of ellipsis have in

common is that the appearance of

el lipsis is optional. The occurrence

of VP-el lipsis, for instance, is often

optional, e.g. He will help, and she

wi l l (help), too. Whether or not

the verb help is elided in this

sentence is up to the speaker and

to communicative aspects of the

s i tuational context in which the

sentence is uttered. This

optionality i s a clear indication of

el lipsis. At other times, however,

el lipsis seems to be obligatory, for

instance with cases of

comparative deletion, e.g. *More

gi rl s were there today than girls

were there yesterday. The second

occurrence of girls must be

omitted in this sentence (More

gi rl s were there today than were

there yesterday). The obligatory

occurrence of ellipsis complicates

the analysis, since one can argue

that obligatory cases are not really

instances of ellipsis at all, but

rather a null pro-form is involved.

These aspects of the theory

should be kept in mind when

cons idering the various types and

instances of ellipsis enumerated

below.

There are numerous widely

acknowledged types of ellipsis.

Nine of them are mentioned and

briefly illustrated below: 1)

gapping, 2) s tripping, 3) VP-

el lipsis, 4) pseudogapping, 5)

answer fragments, 6) s luicing, 7)

N-el lipsis, 8) comparative deletion,

and 9) null complement anaphora.

One should note that there is no

unanimity among experts that a ll

nine of the mechanisms should

indeed qualify as ellipsis. Most

experts would agree, however,

that most of the nine are in fact

el lipsis. The discussion below

takes their status as ellipsis largely

for granted.

The example sentences below

employ the convention whereby

the el ided material is indicated

with subscripts and smaller font

s ize.

[edit]Gapping

Gapping occurs in coordinate

s tructures. Redundant material

that i s present in the immediately

preceding clause can be "gapped".

This gapped material usually

conta ins a finite verb. Canonical

cases have a true "gap" insofar

a remnant appears to the left and

to the right of the elided material.

John can play the guitar, and

Mary can play the violin. - Gapping

Fred took a picture of you, and

Susan took a picture of me. - Gapping

Whi le canonical cases have medial

gaps as in these two sentences,

the gap need not be medial, and it

can even be discontinuous, e.g.

She persuaded him to do the

homework, and he persuaded her to do

the homework. - Gapping

Should I ca ll you,

or should you call me? - Gapping

Whi le these two sentences again

each have two remnants, the

gapped material is no longer

continuous. There are in a sense

two gaps in each of the gapped

clauses. Gapping has been

thoroughly s tudied, and it is

therefore reasonably well

understood, although the

theoretical analyses can vary

s ignificantly.

[edi t]Stripping

Stripping is also known as bare

argument ellipsis. Many l inguists

take s tripping to be a particular

manifestation of gapping whereby

just one remnant appears in the

gapped clause instead of the two

(or more) that occur in instances

of gapping. The fact that s tripping

i s l imited to occurring in

coordinate structures is the main

reason why s tripping is integrated

into the analysis of gapping:

John can play the guitar, and

Mary can play the guitar, too. - Stripping

Sam has attempted problem 1

twice, and he has attempted problem 2

a lso. - Stripping

These examples illustrate that

s tripping is flexible insofar as the

remnant in the stripped clause i s

not l imited in function; it can, for

instance, be a subject as in the

fi rs t sentence or an object as in

the second sentence. A

particularly frequent type of

s tripping is not-stripping, e.g.

Sam did it, not Fred did it. - not-

Stripping

Sal ly is working on Monday, she is

working not on Tuesday. - not-

Stripping

Not-s tripping's s tatus as a form of

el lipsis can be debated, since the

non-elliptical versions of these

sentences are unacceptable. The

key tra i t of ellipsis, namely, is that

the both versions are supposed to

be acceptable (the elliptical and

non-elliptical version).

[edi t]Verb phrase ellipsis

Verb phrase ellipsis (also VP-

el lipsis or VPE) is a particularly

frequent form of ellipsis in English,

absent from closely related

languages but also used in

Portuguese. VP-ellipsis elides

a non-finite VP. The ellipsis must

be introduced by an auxiliary verb

or by the particleto.

John can play the guitar; Mary

can play the guitar, too. - VP-ellipsis

He has done it before, which

means he will do it again. - VP-

el lipsis

An aspect of VP-ellipsis that i s

unl ike gapping and stripping is

that i t can occur both forwards

and backwards. That is, the ellipsis

can both precede and follow its

antecedent, e.g.

The man who wanted to order the

sa lmon did order the salmon. - VP-

el lipsis

The man who wanted to order the

salmon did order the salmon. - VP-

el lipsis

Of the various ellipsis

mechanisms, VP-ellipsis has

probably been studied the most

and i t is therefore relatively well

understood.

Many l inguists

take pseudogapping to be a

particular manifestation of VP-

el lipsis (not of gapping). Like VP-

el lipsis, pseudogapping is

introduced by an auxiliary verb.

Pseudogapping differs from VP-

el lipsis, however, insofar as the

el ided VP is not entirely gone, but

rather one (or more) remnants of

the VP appear. This aspect of

pseudogapping gives it the

outward appearance of gapping.

Pseudogapping occurs frequently

in comparative and contrastive

contexts :

They have been eating the apples

more than they have been eating the

oranges. - Pseudogapping

I wi l l feed the chickens today i f

you wi l l feed the chickens tomorrow. -

Pseudogapping

Pseudogapping is more restricted

in distribution than VP-ellipsis. For

instance it can hardly occur

backwards, i .e. the ellipsis can

hardly precede i ts antecedent.

Further examples: Would you

want to say that to me, or would

I want to say that to you? -

Pseudogapping

They could read this book more

easily than they could read that

book. - Pseudogapping

Another noteworthy tra it of

pseudogapping (and one that

supports the view that i t is a type

of VP-el lipsis) is that it absent

from languages related to English.

Answer ellipsis associated with

question-answer pairs involves

el lipsis. The question focuses an

unknown piece of information,

often using an interrogative

word (e.g. who, what, when, etc.).

The corresponding answer

provides the missing information

and in so doing, the redundant

information that appeared in the

question is elided, e.g.

Q: Who has been hiding the truth?

A: Bi l ly has been hiding the truth. - Answer

fragment

Q: What have you been trying to

accomplish? A: I have been trying to

accomplish This darn crossword. -

Answer fragment

The fragment answers in these

two sentences are verb arguments

(subject and object NPs). The

fragment can also correspond to

an adjunct, e.g.

Q: When does the ci rcus s tart?

A: The circus starts Tomorrow. - Answer

fragment

Q: Why has the campaign been so

crazy? A: The campaign has been so

crazy Due to the personalities. -

Answer fragment

Answer ellipsis occurs in most if

not a l l languages. It is a very

frequent type of ellipsis that is

omnipresent in everyday

communication between

speakers.

Sluicing usually elides everything

from a di rect or indirect question

except the question word. It is a

frequent type of ellipsis that

appears to occur in most if not a ll

languages. It can operate both

forwards and backwards like VP-

el lipsis, but unlike gapping,

s tripping, answer fragments, and

pseudogapping, e.g.

John can play something, but I

don’t know what he can play. -

Sluicing

When he will call I don't know, but

John wi ll definitely call. - Sluicing

The s luicing illustrated with these

two sentences has occurred in

indirect questions. Sluicing in

di rect questions i s illustrated with

the fol lowing two examples:

A: Something unusual happened.

B: What happened? - Sluicing

A: He has been working on the

problem. B: When has he been working on

the problem? - Sluicing

Sluicing has been studied intensely

in the past decade and can be

viewed as a relatively well

understood ellipsis mechanism,

a l though the theoretical analysis

of certa in aspects of sluicing

remains controversial.

Noun ellipsis (also N-ellipsis, NP-

el lipsis, NPE ) occurs when the

noun and perhaps accompanying

modifiers are omitted from a noun

phrase. N-ellipsis occurs with a

l imited set of modifiers in English

(cardinal and ordinal numbers and

possessive determiners), whereas

i t i s much freer in other languages.

The following examples illustrate

N-el lipsis with cardinal and ordinal

numbers:

Fred did three tasks because

Susan had done two tasks. - N-

el lipsis

The fi rst tra in and the

second train have arrived. - N-

el lipsis

And the following two sentences

i l lustrate N-ellipsis with possessive

determiners:

I heard Mary's dog, and you heard

Bi l l's dog. - N-ellipsis

If Doris tries my chili, I will try

hers chili. - N-ellipsis

The fact that hers (as opposed

to her) must appear in the second

sentence could be interpreted to

mean that the modifier that

introduces the ellipsis i s actually

not an adjective or determiner,

but rather it is a pronoun. Based

on this observation, one could

argue that N-ellipsis is in fact not

actually a type of ellipsis, but

rather the modifier serves as a

pronoun of a sort, which means

nothing has been elided.[1]

Comparative deletion occurs in

comparative clauses introduced

by than in English. The expression

in the comparative clause is elided

that corresponds to the

expression focused by a

comparative morph such

as more or -er in the antecedent

clause, e.g.

More people arrived than we

expected people would arrive. -

Comparative deletion

She ordered more beer than we

could drink beer. - Comparative

deletion

Doris looks more satisfied than

Doreen looks satisfied. - Comparative

deletion

Wi l liam has friends in more

countries than you have friends

in countries. - Comparative deletion

Comparative deletion is different

from many of the other optional

el lipsis mechanisms insofar as it is

obl igatory. The non-elliptical

vers ions of these sentences are

unacceptable. a complete

complement, whereby the elided

complement is a finite clause,

infinitive phrase, or prepositional

phrase. The verbal predicates that

can l icense null complement

anaphora form a limited set

(e.g. know, approve, refuse,decide

). Interestingly, the elided

complement cannot be a noun

phrase.

Q: Do you know what happened?

A:No, I don't know what happened? -

Nul l complement anaphora

Q: Do you approve of the plan? A:

No, I don't approve of the plan. - Nul l

complement anaphora

They told Bill to help, but he

refused to help. - Null complement

anaphora

They offered two ways to spend

the day, but I couldn't

decide between them. - Nul l

complement anaphora

Of the various ellipsis

mechanisms, null complement

anaphora is the least studied. In

this regard, its status as ellipsis is a

point of debate, s ince its behavior

i s not consistent with the behavior

of many of the other ellipsis

mechanisms.

What i s END-STOPPED?

END-STOPPED means the line

ends in punctuation, so that there

i s a distinct pause at the end of

the l ine.

EXAMPLE

The sea is ca lm tonight.

What i s ENJAMBMENT?

ENJAMBED LINE mean the line

continues through into the next

l ine of poetry. It is a lso called a

“run-on” line. No punctuation will

appear at the end of

an ENJAMBED LINE. You are

meant to read straight through

the l ine when it contains no

punctuation at the end.

EXAMPLE

She i s as in a field a silken tent

At midday when a sunny summer

breeze

Has dried the dew and all its ropes

relent,

What i s a CAESURA?

A CAESURA ia a pause in the

middle of a line of poetry,

indicated by a punctuation mark in

order to symbolize a pause.

EXAMPLE

St. Agnes ’ Eve – Ah, bitter chill it

was!

The owl , for a ll his feathers, was a-

cold. Al legory A symbolic narrative in which the surface details imply a secondary meaning. Al legory often takes the

form of a s tory in which the characters represent moral

qualities. The most famous example in English i s John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, in

which the name of the central character, Pi lgrim, epitomizes the

book's allegorical nature. Kay Boyle's s tory "Astronomer's Wife"

and Christina Rossetti's poem "Up-Hi l l" both contain allegorical elements. Al l iteration

The repetition of consonant sounds, especially at the beginning

of words . Example: "Fetched fresh, as I suppose, off some sweet wood." Hopkins, "In the

Val ley of the Elwy." Anapest

Two unaccented syllables followed by an accented one, as in com-pre-HEND or in-ter-VENE. An

anapestic meter rises to the accented beat as in Byron's lines from "The Destruction of Sennacherib": "And the sheen of

their spears was l ike stars on the sea, / When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee."

Antagonist A character or force against which

another character struggles. Creon is Antigone's antagonist in Sophocles' playAntigone; Teiresias i s the antagonist of Oedipus in Sophocles' Oedipus the King. Assonance The repetition of similar vowel sounds in a sentence or a line of poetry or prose, as in "I rose and told him of my woe." Whitman's "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer" contains assonantal

"I 's" in the following lines: "How soon unaccountable I became

ti red and sick, / Till ri sing and gl iding out I wander'd off by myself."

Aubade A love lyric in which the speaker complains about the arrival of the dawn, when he must part from his lover. John Donne's "The Sun Ris ing" exemplifies this poetic genre. Ba l lad A narrative poem written in four-

l ine stanzas, characterized by swift action and narrated in a direct s tyle. The Anonymous medieval

ba l lad, "Barbara Allan," exemplifies the genre.

Blank verse A l ine of poetry or prose in unrhymed iambic pentameter.

Shakespeare's sonnets, Mi lton's

epic poem Paradise Lost, and Robert Frost's meditative poems such as "Birches" include many l ines of blank verse. Here are the

opening blank verse lines of "Birches": When I see birches

bend to left and right / Across the l ines of s traighter darker trees, / I l ike to think some boy's been

swinging them. Caesura

A s trong pause within a line of verse. The following stanza from Hardy's "The Man He Ki lled"

conta ins caesuras in the middle two l ines: He thought he'd 'list, perhaps, Off-hand-like--just as I--

Was out of work-had sold his traps -- No other reason why.

Character An imaginary person that inhabits

a l i terary work. Literary characters may be major or minor, s tatic (unchanging) or dynamic (capable of change). In Shakespeare's Othello, Desdemona is a major character, but one who is static, like the minor character Bianca. Othello is a major character who is dynamic, exhibiting an ability to change. Characterization The means by which wri ters

present and reveal character. Al though techniques of

characterization are complex, wri ters typically reveal characters through their speech, dress,

manner, and actions. Readers come to understand the character Miss Emily in Faulkner's story "A Rose for Emily" through what she says , how she lives, and what she does. Cl imax The turning point of the action in the plot of a play or s tory. The

cl imax represents the point of greatest tension in the work. The cl imax of John Updike's "A&P," for

example, occurs when Sammy quits his job as a cashier.

Closed form A type of form or s tructure in poetry characterized by regularity

and consistency in such elements

as rhyme, line length, and metrical pattern. Frost's "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening" provides one of many examples. A

s ingle s tanzaillustrates some of the features of closed form:

Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the vi llage though.

He wi ll not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with

snow. Compl ication An intensification of the conflict in

a s tory or play. Complication bui lds up, accumulates, and develops the primary or central confl ict in a literary work. Frank

O'Connor's story "Guests of the Nation" provides a striking example, as does Ralph Ellison's

"Battle Royal." Confl ict

A s truggle between opposing forces in a s tory or play, usually resolved by the end of the work. The conflict may occur within a character as well as between characters. Lady Gregory's one-act play The Rising of the Moon exemplifies both types of confl ict as the Policeman wrestles with his conscience in an inner confl ict and confronts an antagonist in the person of the

ba l lad singer. Connotation

The associations called up by a word that goes beyond its dictionary meaning. Poets,

especially, tend to use words rich in connotation. Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" includes intensely connotative language, as in these l ines: "Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright / Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, / Rage, rage against the

dying of the light." Convention A customary feature of a literary

work, such as the use of a chorus in Greek tragedy, the

inclusion of an explicit moral in a fable, or the use of a particular rhyme scheme in a vi llanelle.

Li terary conventions are defining

features of particular literary genres, such as novel, short story, ba l lad, sonnet, and play. Couplet

A pa ir of rhymed lines that may or may not constitute a

separate stanza in a poem. Shakespeare's sonnets end in rhymed couplets, as in "For thy

sweet love remembered such wealth brings / That then I scorn

to change my s tate with kings." Dactyl A s tressed syllable followed by

two unstressed ones, as in FLUT-ter-ing or BLUE-ber-ry. The fol lowing playful lines illustrate double dactyls, two dactyls per

l ine: Higgledy, piggledy, Emi ly Dickinson

Gibbering, jabbering. Denotation

The dictionary meaning of a word. Writers typically play off a word's denotative meaning against its connotations, or suggested and implied associational implications. In the following lines from Peter Meinke's "Advice to My Son" the references to flowers and fruit, bread and wine denote specific things, but also suggest something beyond the literal, dictionary meanings of the words:

To be specific, between the peony and rose

Plant squash and spinach, turnips and tomatoes; Beauty is nectar and nectar, in a

desert, saves-- ... and a lways serve bread with your wine. But, son, a lways serve wine. Denouement The resolution of the plot of a l i terary work. The denouement

of Hamlet takes place after the catastrophe, with the stage l i ttered with corpses. During the

denouement Fortinbras makes an entrance and a speech, and

Horatio speaks his sweet lines in pra ise of Hamlet. Dia logue

The conversation of characters in

a l i terary work. In fiction, dialogue is typically enclosed within quotation marks. In plays, characters' speech is preceded by

their names. Diction

The selection of words in a literary work. A work's diction forms one of i ts centrally important literary

elements, as wri ters use words to convey action, reveal character,

imply attitudes, identify themes, and suggest va lues. We can speak of the diction particular to a

character, as in Iago's and Desdemona's very different ways of speaking in Othello. We can a lso refer to a poet's diction as

represented over the body of his or her work, as in Donne's or Hughes's diction.

Elegy A lyric poem that laments the

dead. Robert Hayden's "Those Winter Sundays" is elegiac in tone. A more explicitly identified elegy is W.H. Auden's "In Memory of Wi l liam Butler Yeats" and his "Funeral Blues." El i sion The omission of an unstressed vowel or syllable to preserve the meter of a line of poetry. Alexander uses elision in "Sound and Sense": "Flies o'er th'

unbending corn...." Enjambment

A run-on line of poetry in which logical and grammatical sense carries over from one line into the

next. An enjambed l ine differs from an end-stopped l ine in which the grammatical and logical sense i s completed within the line. In the opening lines of Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess," for example, the first line is end-stopped and the second enjambed:

That's my last Duchess painted on the wall, Looking as i f she were a live. I ca ll

That piece a wonder, now.... Epic

A long narrative poem that records the adventures of a hero. Epics typically chronicle the origins

of a civi lization and embody i ts

centra l va lues. Examples from western literature include Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Vi rgi l's Aeneid, and

Mi l ton's Paradise Lost. Epigram

A brief witty poem, often satirical. Alexander Pope's "Epigram Engraved on the Collar of a Dog"

exemplifies the genre: I am his Highness' dog at Kew;

Pray tel l me, sir, whose dog are you? Expos ition

The fi rst s tage of a fictional or dramatic plot, in which necessary background information is provided. Ibsen's A Doll's House,

for instance, begins with a conversation between the two centra l characters, a dialogue that

fi l ls the audience in on events that occurred before the action of the

play begins, but which are important in the development of i ts plot. Fa l ling action In the plot of a story or play, the action following the climax of the work that moves i t towards i ts denouement or resolution. The fa l ling action of Othello begins after Othello realizes that Iago is responsible for plotting against him by spurring him on to murder

his wife, Desdemona. Fa l ling meter

Poetic meters such as trochaic and dactyl ic that move or fall from a s tressed to an unstressed syllable.

The nonsense l ine, "Higgledy, piggledy," i s dactylic, with the accent on the first syllable and the two syl lables following falling off from that accent in each word. Trochaic meter is represented by this line: "Hip-hop, be-bop, treetop--freedom." Fiction

An imagined story, whether in prose, poetry, or drama. Ibsen's Nora i s fictional, a "make-believe"

character in a play, as are Hamlet and Othello. Characters like

Robert Browning's Duke and Duchess from his poem "My Last Duchess" are fictional as well,

though they may be based on

actual historical individuals. And, of course, characters in stories and novels are fictional, though they, too, may be based, in some

way, on real people. The important thing to remember i s

that wri ters embellish and embroider and alter actual l ife when they use real life as the basis

for their work. They fictionalize facts , and deviate from real-life

s i tuations as they "make things up." Figurative language

A form of language use in which wri ters and speakers convey something other than the l iteral meaning of their words. Examples

include hyperbole or exaggeration, litotes or understatement, s imile and

metaphor, which employ comparison, and synecdoche and

metonymy, in which a part of a thing stands for the whole. Flashback An interruption of a work's chronology to describe or present an incident that occurred prior to the main time frame of a work's action. Writers use flashbacks to compl icate the sense of chronology in the plot of their works and to convey the richness of the experience of human time.

Faulkner's story "A Rose for Emily" includes flashbacks.

Foi l A character who contrasts and para llels the main character in a

play or s tory. Laertes, in Hamlet, is a foi l for the main character; in Othello, Emilia and Bianca are foi ls for Desdemona. Foot A metrical unit composed of s tressed and unstressed syllables. For example, an iamb or iambic foot i s represented by ̆ ', that i s,

an unaccented syllable followed by an accented one. Frost's line "Whose woods these are I think I

know" contains four iambs, and is thus an iambic foot.

Foreshadowing Hints of what i s to come in the action of a play or a story.

Ibsen's A Doll's House includes

foreshadowing as does Synge's Riders to the Sea. So, too, do Poe's "Cask of Amontillado" and Chopin's "Story of an Hour."

Free verse Poetry without a regular pattern

of meter or rhyme. The verse is "free" in not being bound by earlier poetic conventions

requiring poems to adhere to an expl icit and identifiable meter and

rhyme scheme in a form such as the sonnet or ballad. Modern and contemporary poets of the

twentieth and twenty-first centuries often employ free verse. Wi l liams's "This Is Just to Say" i s one of many examples.

Hyperbole A figure of speech involving exaggeration. John Donne uses

hyperbole in his poem: "Song: Go and Catch a Falling Star."

Iamb An unstressed syllable followed by a s tressed one, as in to-DAY. See Foot. Image A concrete representation of a sense impression, a feeling, or an idea. Imagery refers to the pattern of related details in a work. In some works one image predominates either by recurring throughout the work or by

appearing at a cri tical point in the plot. Often writers use multiple

images throughout a work to suggest states of feeling and to convey implications of thought

and action. Some modern poets, such as Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams, write poems that lack discursive explanation enti rely and include only images. Among the most famous examples i s Pound's poem "In a Station of the Metro": The apparition of these faces in

the crowd; Peta ls on a wet, black bough. Imagery

The pattern of related comparative aspects of language,

particularly of images, in a l iterary work. Imagery of l ight and darkness pervade James Joyce's

s tories "Araby," "The Boarding

House," and "The Dead." So, too, does religious imagery. Irony A contrast or discrepancy between

what i s said and what i s meant or between what happens and what

i s expected to happen in life and in l iterature. In verbal irony, characters say the opposite of

what they mean. In irony of ci rcumstance or situation, the

opposite of what is expected occurs . In dramatic irony, a character speaks in ignorance of a

s i tuation or event known to the audience or to the other characters. Flannery O'Connor's short s tories employ all these

forms of i rony, as does Poe's "Cask of Amontillado." Li teral language

A form of language in which wri ters and speakers mean exactly

what their words denote. See Figurative language,Denotation, and Connotation. Lyric poem A type of poem characterized by brevi ty, compression, and the expression of feeling. Most of the poems in this book are lyrics. The anonymous "Western Wind" epitomizes the genre: Western wind, when will thou

blow, The small ra in down can ra in?

Chris t, i f my love were in my arms And I in my bed again! Metaphor

A comparison between essentially unl ike things without an explicitly comparative word such as l ike or as. An example is "My love i s a red, red rose," From Burns's "A Red, Red Rose." Langston Hughes's "Dream Deferred" i s built entirely of metaphors. Metaphor is one of

the most important of l iterary uses of language. Shakespeare employs a wide range of

metaphor in his sonnets and his plays, often in such density and

profusion that readers are kept busy analyzing and interpreting and unraveling them.

Compare Simile.

Meter The measured pattern of rhythmic accents in poems. See Foot and Iamb.

Metonymy A figure of speech in which a

closely related term is substituted for an object or idea. An example: "We have always remained loyal

to the crown." See Synecdoche. Narrative poem

A poem that tells a story. See Ballad. Narrator

The voice and implied speaker of a fictional work, to be distinguished from the actual living author. For example, the narrator of Joyce's

"Araby" i s not James Joyce himself, but a literary fictional character created expressly to tell

the s tory. Faulkner's "A Rose for Emi ly" contains a communal

narrator, identified only as "we." See Point of view. Octave An eight-line unit, which may constitute a stanza; or a section of a poem, as in the octave of a sonnet. Ode A long, stately poem in stanzas of varied length, meter, and form. Usually a serious poem on an exa l ted subject, such as Horace's

"Eheu fugaces," but sometimes a more l ighthearted work, such as

Neruda's "Ode to My Socks ." Onomatopoeia The use of words to imitate the

sounds they describe. Words such as buzz and crack are onomatopoetic. The following line from Pope's "Sound and Sense" onomatopoetically imitates in sound what i t describes: When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw, The l ine too labors, and the words

move s low. Most often, however, onomatopoeia refers to words

and groups of words, such as Tennyson's description of the

"murmur of innumerable bees," which attempts to capture the sound of a swarm of bees buzzing.

Open form A type of s tructure or form in poetry characterized by freedom from regularity and consistency in

such elements as rhyme, line length, metrical pattern, and

overa ll poetic s tructure. E.E. Cummings's "[Buffalo Bill's]" is one example. See also Free verse.

Parody A humorous, mocking imitation of

a l i terary work, sometimes sarcastic, but often playful and even respectful in i ts playful

imitation. Examples include Bob McKenty's parody of Frost's "Dust of Snow" and Kenneth Koch's parody of Williams's "This is Just

to Say." Personification The endowment of inanimate

objects or abstract concepts with animate or l iving qualities. An

example: "The yellow leaves flaunted their color gaily in the breeze." Wordsworth's "I wandered lonely as a cloud" includes personification. Plot The unified structure of incidents in a l iterary work. See Conflict, Cl imax, Denouement, andFlashback. Point of view The angle of vision from which a

s tory i s narrated. See Narrator. A work's point of view can be: fi rst

person, in which the narrator is a character or an observer, respectively; objective, in which

the narrator knows or appears to know no more than the reader; omniscient, in which the narrator knows everything about the characters; and l imited omniscient, which allows the narrator to know some things about the characters but not everything.

Protagonist The main character of a l iterary work--Hamlet and Othello i n the

plays named after them, Gregor Samsa in Kafka'sMetamorphosis,

Paul in Lawrence's "Rocking-Horse Winner."

Pyrrhic A metrical foot with two unstressed syllables ("of the"). Quatra in

A four-line stanza in a poem, the fi rs t four l ines and the second four

l ines in a Petrachan sonnet. A Shakespearean sonnet contains three quatrains followed by a

couplet. Recognition

The point at which a character understands his or her situation as i t rea lly i s. Sophocles' Oedipus

comes to this point near the end of Oedipus the King; Othello comes to a similar understanding of his s ituation in Act V of Othello.

Resolution The sorting out or unraveling of a plot at the end of a play, novel, or

s tory. See Plot. Reversal

The point at which the action of the plot turns in an unexpected direction for the protagonist. Oedipus's and Othello's recognitions are also reversals. They learn what they did not expect to learn. See Recognition and a lso Irony. Rhyme The matching of final vowel or consonant sounds in two or more words . The following stanza of

"Richard Cory" employs a lternate rhyme, with the third line rhyming

with the first and the fourth with the second: Whenever Richard Cory went

down town, We people on the pavement looked at him; He was a gentleman from sole to crown Clean favored and imperially s lim. Rhythm The recurrence of accent or stress in l ines of verse. In the following

l ines from "Same in Blues" by Langston Hughes, the accented words and syllables are

underlined: I sa id to my baby,

Baby take it s low.... Lulu said to Leonard I want a diamond ring

Ris ing action A set of conflicts and crises that constitute the part of a play's or s tory's plot leading up to

the cl imax. See Cl imax,Denouement, and Plot.

Ris ing meter Poetic meters such as iambic and anapestic that move

or ascend from an unstressed to a s tressed syllable.

SeeAnapest, Iamb, and Falling meter. Sati re

A l i terary work that cri ticizes human misconduct and ridicules vices , stupidities, and follies. Swift's Gulliver's Travels is a

famous example. Chekhov's Marriage Proposal and O'Connor's "Everything That Rises

Must Converge," have s trong satirical elements.

Sestet A s ix-line unit of verse constituting a s tanza or section of a poem; the last six l ines of an Italian sonnet. Examples: Petrarch's "If i t is not love, then what is i t that I feel," and Frost's "Design." Sestina A poem of thirty-nine lines and wri tten in iambic pentameter. Its s ix-line s tanza repeat in an intricate and prescribed order the

final word in each of the first six l ines. After the sixth stanza, there

i s a three-line envoi, which uses the s ix repeating words, two per l ine.

Setting The time and place of a literary work that establish i ts context. The s tories of Sandra Cisneros are set in the American southwest in the mid to late 20th century, those of James Joyce in Dublin, Ireland in the early 20th century. Simile

A figure of speech involving a comparison between unlike things us ing like, as, or as though. An

example: "My love is l ike a red, red rose."

Sonnet A fourteen-line poem in iambic pentameter. The Shakespearean

or Engl ish sonnet is arranged as

three quatrains and a final couplet, rhyming abab cdcd efef gg. The Petrarchan or Italian sonnet divides into two parts: an

eight-line octave and a six-line sestet, rhyming abba abba cde cde

or abba abba cd cd cd. Spondee A metricalfoot represented by two

s tressed syllables, such as KNICK-KNACK.

Stanza A division or unit of a poem that is repeated in the same form--either

with s imilar or identical patterns or rhyme andmeter, or with variations from one stanza to another. The stanzas of Gertrude

Schnackenberg's "Signs" are regular; those of Rita Dove's "Canary" are i rregular.

Style The way an author chooses words,

arranges them in sentences or in l ines of dialogue or verse, and develops ideas and actions with description, imagery, and other l i terary techniques. See Connotation, Denotation, Diction, Figurative language,Image, Imagery, Irony, Metaphor, Narrator, Point of view, Syntax, and Tone. Subject What a s tory or play i s about; to

be distinguished from plot and theme. Faulkner's

"A Rose for Emily" is about the decl ine of a particular way of l ife endemic to the American south

before the civil war. Its plot concerns how Faulkner describes and organizes the actions of the s tory's characters. Its theme is the overa ll meaning Faulkner conveys. Subplot A subsidiary or subordinate or para llel plot in a play or s tory that coexists with the main plot. The

s tory of Rosencrantz and Gui ldenstern forms a subplot with the overall plot of Hamlet.

Symbol An object or action in a literary

work that means more than i tself, that s tands for something beyond i tself. The glass unicorn in The

Glass Menagerie, the rocking

horse in "The Rocking-Horse Winner," the road in Frost's "The Road Not Taken"--all are symbols in this sense.

Synecdoche A figure of speech in which a part

i s substituted for the whole. An example: "Lend me a hand." See Metonymy.

Syntax The grammatical order of words in

a sentence or line of verse or dia logue. The organization of words and phrases and clauses in

sentences of prose, verse, and dia logue. In the following example, normal syntax (subject, verb, object order) is inverted:

"Whose woods these are I think I know." Tercet

A three-line stanza, as the stanzas in Frost's "Acquainted With the

Night" and Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind." The three-line s tanzas or sections that together constitute the sestet of a Petrarchan or Italian sonnet. Theme The idea of a literary work abstracted from its details of language, character, and action, and cast in the form of a generalization. See discussion of Dickinson's "Crumbling is not an

instant's Act." Tone

The implied attitude of a wri ter toward the subject and characters of a work, as, for example,

Flannery O'Connor's ironic tone in her "Good Country People." See Irony. Trochee An accented syllable followed by an unaccented one, as in FOOT-bal l. Understatement A figure of speech in which a

wri ter or speaker says less than what he or she means; the opposite of exaggeration. The last

l ine of Frost's "Birches" illustrates this literary device: "One could do

worse than be a swinger of bi rches." Vi l lanelle

A nineteen-line lyric poem that

rel ies heavily on repetition. The fi rs t and third lines alternate throughout the poem, which i s s tructured in six s tanzas --

five tercets and a concluding quatrain. Examples

include Bishop's "One Art," Roethke's "The Waking," and Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle into

That Good Night."

Al legory

Definition:

An a l legory i s a symbolism device

where the meaning of a greater,

often abstract, concept is

conveyed with the aid of a more

corporeal object or idea being

used as an example. Usually a

rhetoric device, an allegory

suggests a meaning via

metaphoric examples.

Example:

Fa i th i s like a stony uphill climb: a s ingle s tumble might send you

sprawling but belief and

s teadfastness will see you to the

very top.

Al l iteration

Definition:

Al l iteration is a literary device

where words are used in quick

succession and begin with letters

belonging to the same sound

group. Whether it i s the

consonant sound or a specific

vowel group, the alliteration

involves creating a repetition of

s imilar sounds in the sentence.

Al l iterations are also created when

the words all begin with the same

letter. Alliterations are used to

add character to the wri ting and

often add an element of ‘fun’ to

the piece..

Example:

The Wicked Witch of the West went her own way. (The ‘W’ sound

i s highlighted and repeated

throughout the sentence.)

Al lusion

Definition:

An a l lusion is a figure of speech

whereby the author refers to a

subject matter such as a place,

event, or l iterary work by way of a

passing reference. It is up to the

reader to make a connection to

the subject being mentioned.

Example:

It’s no wonder everyone refers to

Mary as another Mother Teresa in

the making; she loves to help and

care after people everywhere-

from the s treets to her own

friends.

In the example the author uses

the mention of Mother Teresa to

indicate the sort of qualities that

Mary has .

Ampl ification

Definition:

Ampl ification refers to a literary

practice wherein the writer

embellishes the sentence by

adding more information to it in

order to increase i ts worth and

understandability. When a plain

sentence is too abrupt and fails to

convey the full implications

des ired, amplification comes into play when the mwriter adds more

to the s tructure to give i t more

meaning.

Example:

Original sentence- The thesis

paper was difficult. After

amplification- The thesis paper was difficult: i t required extensive

research, data collection, sample

surveys , interviews and a lot of

fieldwork.

Anagram

Definition:

Anagrams are an extremely

popular form of literary device wherein the writer jumbles up

parts of the word to create a new

word. From the syllables of a

phrase to the individual letters of

a word, any fraction can be

jumbled to create a new form.

Anagram is a form of wordplay

that a llows the writer to infuse

mystery and a little interactive fun

in the writing so that the reader

can decipher the actual word on

their own and discover a depth of

meaning to the wri ting.

Example:

An anagram for "debit card" is

"bad credit". As you can see, both

phrases use the same letters. By

mixing the letters a bit of humor is

created.

Analogy

Definition:

An analogy is a literary device that

helps to establish a relationship

based on s imilarities between two

concepts or ideas. By using an

analogy we can convey a new idea

by us ing the blueprint of an old

one as a basis for understanding.

With a mental l inkage between

the two, one can create

comprehension regarding the new

concept in a s imple and succinct

manner.

Example:

In the same way as one cannot

have the ra inbow without the

ra in, one cannot achieve success

and riches without hard work. Anastrophe

Definition:

Anastrophe is a form of literary

device wherein the order of the

noun and the adjective in the

sentence is exchanged. In

s tandard parlance and writing the adjective comes before the noun

but when one is employing an

anastrophe the noun is followed

by the adjective. This reversed

order creates a dramatic impact

and lends weight to the

description offered by the

adjective. Example:

He spoke of times past and future,

and dreamt of things to be.

Anthropomorphism

Definition:

Anthropomorphism can be

understood to be the act of

lending a human quality, emotion

or ambition to a non-human

object or being. This act of lending

a human element to a non-human

subject is often employed in order

to endear the latter to the readers

or audience and increase the level

of relativity between the two

whi le a lso lending character to the

subject.

Example:

The raging s torm brought with it

howl ing winds and fierce l ightning

as the residents of the village

looked up at the angry skies in

a larm.

Anti thesis

Definition:

An anti thesis is used when the

wri ter employs two sentences of

contrasting meanings in close

proximity to one another.

Whether they are words or

phrases of the same sentence, an

anti thesis is used to create a stark

contrast using two divergent

elements that come together to

create one uniform whole. An

anti thesis plays on the

complementary property of

opposites to create one vivid

picture. The purpose of using an anti thesis in literature is to create

a ba lance between opposite

qualities and lend a greater insight

into the subject.

Example:

When Neil Armstrong walked on

the moon it might have been one small step for a man but i t was

one giant leap for mankind.

Aphorism

Definition:

An aphorism is a concise

s tatement that is made in a

matter of fact tone to state a

principle or an opinion that is generally understood to be a

universal truth. Aphorisms are

often adages, wise sayings and

maxims aimed at imparting sense

and wisdom. It is to be noted that

aphorisms are usually witty and

curt and often have an underlying

tone of authority to them.

Example:

Upon seeing the shoddy work

done by the employee the boss

told him to “either shape up or

ship out”.

Archetype

Definition: An archetype is a reference to a concept, a person or an object that has served as a prototype of its kind and is the original idea that has come to be used over and over again. Archetypes are literary

devices that employ the use of a famous concept, person or object

to convey a wealth of meaning. Archetypes are immediately identifiable and even though they

run the ri sk of being overused, they are s till the best examples of their

kind. Example:

Romeo and Juliet are an archetype of eternal love and a s tar-crossed love s tory.

Assonance Definition: Assonance refers to repetition of sounds produced by vowels within a sentence or phrase. In this regard assonance can be understood to be

a kind of alliteration. What sets it apart from alliterations is that i t is the repetition of only vowel sounds.

Assonance is the opposite of consonance, which implies

repetitive usage of consonant sounds. Example:

“A long song”. (Where the ‘o’ sound i s repeated in the last two words of the sentence)

Asyndeton Definition: Asyndeton refers to a practice in l i terature whereby the author purposely leaves out conjunctions

in the sentence, while maintaining the grammatical accuracy of the

phrase. Asyndeton as a literary tool helps in shortening up the implied meaning of the entire phrase and

presenting i t in a succinct form. This compact version helps in creating

an immediate impact whereby the reader i s instantly attuned to what the wri ter is trying to convey. Use

of this l iterary device helps in creating a s trong impact and such

sentences have greater recall worth s ince the idea is presented in a nutshell. Example:

1. Read, Write, Learn. 2. Watch, Absorb, Understand.

3. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

Authorial Intrusion

Definition: Authorial Intrusion is an interesting

l i terary device wherein the author penning the story, poem or prose s teps away from the text and

speaks out to the reader. Authorial Intrusion establishes a one to one relationship between the writer and the reader where the latter i s no longer a secondary player or an indirect audience to the progress of the s tory but is the main subject of the author’s attention. Example:

In many olden novels, especially in suspense novels, the protagonist would move away from the stream of the s tory and speak out to the reader. This technique was often

used to reveal some crucial elements of the story to the reader even though the protagonist might remain mystified within the story for the time being.

Bibliomancy Definition: As the very name itself suggests, this kind of literary device finds i ts roots in biblical origins. This term refers to the practice of basing a

plot happening or event and anticipating the results it will have

on a faction of the Bible. It involves a random selection process wherein the biblical passage is

chosen as a founding stone for bas ing the outcome of the writing.

In an overall context, not limited to just l iterature, bibliomancy refers to foretelling the future by turning to

random portions of the Bible for guidance. Example:

The Vedas serve as a tool for

Bibliomancy to the Hindus while Mus l ims rely on the Koran.

Bi ldungsroman Definition:

This is a very popular form of s torytelling whereby the author bases the plot on the overall growth of the central character

throughout the timeline of the s tory. As the story progresses, the

subject undergoes noticeable mental, physical, social, emotional, moral , and often spiritual

advancement and strengthening before the readers’ eyes. It has

often been seen that the protagonist begins with views, aims and dreams that are in contrast to

the other character’s in the s tory and then fights his or her way through to achieve them. Example:

Scarlet O’Hara in Gone With the Wind experiences immense

personal growth as she learns the va lue of friends and hard work under duress, without

compromising her own dreams.

Cacophony

Definition: A cacophony in l iterature refers to

the use of words and phrases that imply s trong, harsh sounds within the phrase. These words have jarring and dissonant sounds that create a disturbing, objectionable atmosphere. Example:

His fingers rapped and pounded the door, and his foot thumped against

the yel lowing wood

Caesura

Definition: This literary device involves

creating a fracture of sorts within a sentence where the two separate parts are distinguishable from one

another yet intrinsically l inked to one another. The purpose of using

a caesura is to create a dramatic pause, which has a strong impact. The pause helps to add an

emotional, often theatrical touch to the sentence and conveys a depth of sentiment in a short phrase. Example:

Mozart- oh how your music makes me soar!

Characterization Definition:

Characterization in literature refers to a s tep-by-step process wherein a character of a story i s brought to notice and then detailed upon in

front of the reader. Characterization is a sort of

ini tiation wherein the reader i s introduced to the character. The ini tial s tep is to introduce the

character with a marked emergence. After the arrival his

behavior is discussed. This is fol lowed by an insight into his thought-process. Then comes the

part where the character voices his opinions or converses with others in the story. The last and finalizing part i s when others in the plot

respond to the character’s presence. Example:

Michael Corleone was not jus' a mafiaso, but a family man. A man

who walked the knife's edge to preserve his sanity.

Chiasmus Definition:

A chiasmus is a l iterary tool where a rhetoric figure of speech is utilized. The uniqueness of a chiasmus arises from the fact that it has two fractions in the whole phrase/ prose/ paragraph and these two fractions are in sync with one

another. The second fraction is arranged in a syntactically tuned form with respect to the first. Example:

You can take the patriot out of the

country but you cannot take the country out of the patriot"

Ci rcumlocution Definition:

Ci rcumlocution is a form of writing where the writer uses

exaggeratedly long and complex sentences in order to convey a meaning that could have otherwise

been conveyed through a shorter, much s impler sentence. Ci rcumlocution involves stating an idea or a view in an indirect manner

that leaves the reader guessing and grasping at the actual meaning. Example:

Instead of writing “he arrived for dinner at 8 pm” the author wri tes,

“8 pm was when he reached the dinner party”.

Confl ict Definition: It i s a literary device used for expressing a resistance the protagonist of the story finds in achieving his a ims/ dreams. The

confl ict is a discord that can have external aggressors or can even

arise from within the self. It occurs when the subject is battling his inner discord, may be at odds with

his surroundings and lastly, may be pi tted against others in the story.

Example:

John tried hard to convince himself that his Hollywood dreams were worth the s truggle but his parents, and his inner voice of reason, failed to agree.

Connotation

Definition: Connotation is a complex l iterary device wherein the intended meaning i s not stated clearly and is

instead conveyed through covert, indirect means. Connotations leaves a little of the meaning

unstated so that the reader can decode it for himself.

Example:

And once again, the autumn leaves were fa lling.

This phrase uses ‘autumn’ to signify

something coming to an end.

Consonance

Definition: Consonance refers to repetition of

sounds produced by consonants within a sentence or phrase. In this regard consonance can be

understood to be a kind of a l literation. What sets it apart from

a l literations is that i t is the repetition of only consonant sounds. Consonance is the opposite of assonance, which implies repetitive usage of vowel sounds. Example:

Sing sweet songs for suzy.

Denotation Definition: Denotation refers to expressing a meaning or the significance of a

part of a s tory in a straightforward, clear-cut manner. There is no roundabout, covert manner employed and hence denotation is

the opposite of connotation. Example:

He packed his bags and made his way out of the house, leaving his old l ife behind forever.

Deus ex Machina

Definition: Deus ex Machina is a rather debatable and often cri ticized form

of l i terary device. It refers to the incidence where an implausible concept or character i s brought into the s tory in order to make the confl ict in the story resolve and to bring about a pleasing solution. The use of Deus ex Machina is not recommended as it is seen to be the mark of a poor plot that the

wri ter needs to resort to random, insupportable and unbelievable twis ts and turns to reach the end of

the s tory. Example:

If in a suspense novel the protagonist suddenly finds a solution to his dilemmas because of divine intervention. Diction Definition: Diction is the distinctive tone or

tenor of an author’s writings. Diction is not just a writer's choice of words it can include the mood, atti tude, dialect and style of wri ting. Diction is usually judged

with reference to the prevailing s tandards of proper writing and

speech and is seen as the mark of quality of the writing. It is also understood as the selection of

certa in words or phrases that become peculiar to a writer. Example:

Certa in wri ters in the modern day

and age use archaic terms such as ‘thy’, ‘thee’ and ‘wherefore’ to imbue a Shakespearean mood to

their work.

Doppelganger Definition: The term is derived from the

German language and l iterally trans lates into ‘double walker’. It

refers to a character in the story that i s actually a counterfeit or a copy of a rea l/ genuine character. Doppelgangers of the main

characters usually bear the ability to impersonate the original but

have vastly different spirits and intentions. The doppelganger usually has a different appearance

but an earthly soul and supernatural hoodwinking abilities

that a llow it to fool other unsuspecting characters. Example:

Dr. Jekyl l and Mr. Hyde

Ekphrastic Definition: Ekphrastic refers to a form of wri ting, mostly poetry, wherein the author describes another work of art, usually visual. It is used to convey the deeper symbolism of

the corporeal art form by means of a separate medium. It has often been found that ekphrastic writing

i s rhetorical in nature and symbolic of a greater meaning.

Example:

A photograph of an empty landscape can convey desolation, abandon and loss. Similarly, one can convey the same sentiments and concepts by using phrases such as ‘an empty doorway’ or ‘a

chi ldless nursery’.

Epi logue Definition: Epi logues are an inherent part of

any s tory or poem and are essential to the s tructure of any wri tten

form. The epilogue is an important l i terary tool that acts as the afterword once the last chapter is

over. The purpose of an epilogue is to add a little insight to some

interesting developments that happen once the major plot is over. Epi logues often act as a teaser

tra i ler to any possible sequels that might be created later. Sometimes the epilogue is used to add a little bi t about the life/future of the main

characters after the s tory i tself has unfolded and wrapped up. Epi logues are an interesting faction

because they can be wri tten in a number of ways : sometimes the

same narrative style as adopted in the s tory i s continued while at other times one of the characters might take up the narrative or

speak one-to-one with the audience.

Example:

In a remarkably contemporary moment at the end of The

Tempest, Shakespeare's wizard Prospero addresses the audience directly, breaking down the boundaries of the play. He informs

them that the play i s over, his powers are gone, and thus his escape from the play's island

setting depends on their applause--that they, in effect, get to decide

his fate.

This serves as a Epilogue for Shakespeare's tra gi-comedy The Tempest.

Epi thet Definition: An epithet is a literary device that is used as a descriptive device. It is

usually used to add to a person or place’s regular name and attribute some special quality to the same.

Epithets are remarkable in that they become a part of common

parlance over time. These descriptive words and phrases can be used to enhance the persona of

rea l and fictitious places, objects, persons and divinities.

Example:

“Alexander the Great” is the epithet

commonly used to refer to Alexander III of Macedon. The

young king has come to be recognized by this epithet in all of his tory and popular culture owing

to his spectacular achievements in creating one of the largest-ever

his torical empires.

Euphemism

Definition: The term ‘euphemism’ is used to

refer to the literary practice of us ing a comparatively milder or less abrasive form of a negative

description instead of its original, unsympathetic form. This device is used when writing about matters such as sex, violence, death, crimes

and "embarrassing". The purpose of euphemisms is to substitute unpleasant and severe words with more genteel ones in order to mask

the harshness.. The use of euphemisms is sometimes

manipulated to lend a touch of exaggeration or irony in satirical wri ting.

Example:

Using “to put out to pasture” when

one implies retiring a person because they are too old to be

effective.

Below are some more examples of Euphemisms

Downsizing - This is used when a

company fi res or lays off a larger number of employees

Friendly fire - This is used by the mi l itary when soldiers are

accidentally killed by other soldiers on the same s ide.

Tipsy - This is a soft way to say that someone has had to much to drink.

Golden years - This is used to describe the later period of life

when someone is of old age.

Gone to heaven - This i s a polite

way to say that someone is dead.

Enhanced interrogation - This is modern euphemism to minimize what by many people would be

viewed as torture.

Euphony Definition: The l iterary device “euphony”

refers to the use of phrases and words that are noted for possessing an extensive degree of notable

loveliness or melody in the sound they create. The use of euphony is

predominant in literary prose and poetry, where poetic devices such

as a lliterations, rhymes and assonace are used to create pleasant sounds. Euphony is the

opposite of ca cophony, which refers to the creation of unpleasant and harsh sounds by using certain words/ phrases together. This l i terary devices is based on the use and manipulation of phonetics in l i terature.

Example:

It has been said that the phrase “cel lar door” i s reportedly the most pleasant sounding phrase in the

Engl ish language. The phrase is said to depict the highest degree of

euphony, and is said to be especially notable when spoken in the Bri tish accent.

Faulty Parallelism

Definition: In l i terature, the term ‘parallelism’ i s used to refer to the practice

placing together similarly s tructure related phrases, words or clauses. Para llelism involves placing sentence i tems in a parallel grammatical format wherein nouns are l isted together, specific verb forms are listed together and the suchlike. When one fails to follow this parallel structure, i t results in

faulty parallelism. The failure to maintain a balance in grammatical forms is known as faulty parallelism

wherein similar grammatical forms receive dissimilar/unequal weight.

Example:

On the TV show The Simpsons, lead character Bart Simpson says, “they are laughing, not with me”.

Flashback Definition: Flashback is a literary device wherein the writer/ author depicts the occurrence of specific events to the reader, which have taken place before the present time the

narration is following, or events that have happened before the

events that are currently being unfolded in the story. Flashback devices that are commonly used

are past narratives by characters, depictions and references of

dreams and memories and a sub-device known as authorial sovereignty wherein the author

di rectly chooses to refer to a past occurrence by bringing it up in a s tra ightforward manner. Flashback i s used to create a background to

the present s ituation, place or person. Example:

Back in the day when Sarah was a young gi rl…

You can see flashbacks used very often in movies. For example, is is common in movies for there to be a flashback that gives the viewer a

look into the characters life when they were younger, or when they

have done something previously. This is done to help the viewer better understand the present

s i tuation.

Foi l Definition: The term ‘foil’ refers to a literary

device where the author creates a character whose primary purpose is

to create a contrast to another character by laying emphasis or drawing attention to the latter’s

tra i ts and characteristics through the former’s obviously contradictory ones. Example:

In the popular book series, Harry Potter, the character of Hogwarts principal Albus Dumbledore, who

portrays ‘good’, is constantly shown to bel ieve in the power of true love

(of a l l forms and types) and is portrayed as a s trong, benevolent and positive character while the antagonist Lord Voldemort, who depicts the evil and ‘bad’ in the series is constantly shown to mock and disbelieve the sentiment of

love and think of it as a foolish indulgence, a trait that is finally his undoing.

Foreshadowing Definition: The l iterary device foreshadowing refers to the use of indicative words/phrases and hints that set the s tage for a s tory to unfold and

give the reader a hint of something that i s going to happen without

revealing the story or spoiling the suspense. Foreshadowing is used to suggest an upcoming outcome to

the s tory. Example:

“He had no idea of the disastrous chain of events to follow”. In this

sentence, while the protagonist i s clueless of further developments, the reader learns that something

disastrous and problematic is about to happen to/for him.

Hubris Definition: Hubris, in this day and age, i s another way of saying overly

arrogant. You can tell the di fference of hubris and just regular

arrogance or pride by the fact that the character has seemed to allow rea lity s lip away from them. The

character portraying hubris, also commonly referred to as hybris,

may have just gained a huge amount of power and the false bel ief that they are “untouchable”.

This term hubris used to have a s l ightly different meaning and was a very negative subject back in ancient Greek. It used to be closely

related to a crime in Athens. In wri ting and l iterature hubris is generally considered a “tragic flaw”

and i t is saved for the protagonist. The reason for this i s because at the

end of the s tory you should be able to see that it is this flaw that brings the “bad guy” down. Example:

A classic example of hubris is featured in Shakespeare’s play Macbeth. Macbeth, the

protagonist, overfilled with ambition and arrogance, allows his

hubris to think you would be able to ki l l the valiant Duncan without penalty so he can claim the throne

of Scotland for himself. Obviously murder i s highly frowned upon, so

this eventually leads to Macbeth’s demise as well.

Hyperbaton Definition:

A hyperbaton is a literary device wherein the author plays with the regular positioning of words and

phrases and creates a differently s tructured sentence to convey the same meaning. It is said that by us ing a hyperbaton, words/ phrases

overstep their conventional placements and result in a more complex and intriguing sentence

s tructure. This literary device is used to add more depth and

interest to the sentence structure. Example:

“Alone he walked on the cold, lonely roads”. This sentence is a

variation of the more conventional, “He walked alone on the cold, lonely roads”.

Hyperbole Definition: A hyperbole is a literary device wherein the author uses specific words and phrases that exaggerate

and overemphasize the basic crux of the s tatement in order to

produce a grander, more noticeable effect. The purpose of hyperbole is to create a larger-than-life effect

and overly s tress a specific point. Such sentences usually convey an

action or sentiment that is generally not practically/ rea listically possible or plausible

but helps emphasize an emotion. Example:

“I am so tired I cannot walk another inch” or “I’m so sleepy I might fall

as leep s tanding here”.

Imagery Definition: In l i terature, one of the strongest

devices is imagery wherein the author uses words and phrases to create “mental images” for the

reader. Imagery helps the reader to visualize and therein more

rea listically experience the author’s writings. The usage of metaphors, a l lusions, descriptive words and

s imiles amongst other literary forms in order to “tickle” and

awaken the readers’ sensory perceptions is referred to as imagery. Imagery i s not limited to only visual sensations, but also refers to igniting kinesthetic, ol factory, tactile, gustatory, thermal and auditory sensations as well.

Example:

The gushing brook stole i ts way

down the lush green mountains, dotted with tiny flowers in a riot of colors and trees coming a live with

ga i ly chirping birds.

Internal Rhyme Definition: In l i terature the internal rhyme is a

practice of forming a rhyme in only one lone line of verse. An internal rhyme is also known as the middle rhyme because i t is typically

constructed in the middle of a line to rhyme with the bit at the end of the same metrical line. Example:

The l ine from the famed poem Ancient Mariner, “We were the first

that ever burst”.

Inversion

Definition: The term ‘inversion’ refers to the

practice of changing the conventional placement of words. It i s a literary practice typical of the

older classical poetry genre. In present day l iterature i t is usually used for the purpose of laying emphasis this literary device is more prevalent in poetry than prose because i t helps to arrange the poem in a manner that catches the attention of the reader not only with i ts content but also with its

phys ical appearance; a result of the peculiar s tructuring. Example:

In the much known and read Paradise Lost, Mi lton wrote:

“Of Man's First Disobedience, and the Frui t

Of that Forbidden Tree, whose

morta l taste

Brought Death into the World, and a l l our woe,

With loss of Eden, till one greater

Man

Restore us, and regain the blissful

Seat,

Sing Heav'nly Muse. . .”

Irony Definition: The use of irony in literature refers

to playing around with words such that the meaning implied by a sentence/word is actually different from the l iteral meaning derived. Often, i rony i s used to suggest the

s tark contrast of the literal meaning being put forth. The deeper, real

layer of significance is revealed not

by the words themselves but the s i tuation and the context in which

they are placed. Example:

Writing a sentence such as, “Oh! What fine luck I have!”. The sentence on the surface conveys that the speaker is happy with their

luck but actually what they mean is that they are extremely unhappy

and dissatisfied with their (bad) luck.

Juxtaposition Definition:

In l i terature, juxtaposition i s a l i terary device wherein the author places a person, concept, place,

idea or theme parallel to another. The purpose of juxtaposing two

directly/indirectly related entities close together in literature i s to highlight the contrast between the

two and compare them. This l i terary device is usually used for etching out a character in detail, creating suspense or lending a

rhetorical effect. Example:

In Paradise Lost, Mi lton has used

juxtaposition to draw a parallel between the two protagonists,

Satan and God, who he discusses by placing their tra its in comparison with one another to highlight their di fferences.

Kennings Definition: The use of Kennings in literature is

characteristically related to works in Old English poetry where the

author would use a twist of words, figure of speech or magic poetic phrase or a newly created compound sentence or phrase to refer to a person, object, place, action or idea. The use of imagery and indicative, direct and indirect

references to substitute the proper, formal name of the subject is

known as kennings. The use of kennings was also prevalent in Old Norse and Germanic poetry.

Example:

Whi le kennings are rare in modern day language, there are a few common examples. The phrase

“tramp stamp”, used to refer to women’s tattoos on the lower back, i s a popular one, referring to a

trashy, tacky and vulgar tattoo.

Malapropism Definition: Malapropism in l iterature refers to the practice of misusing words by

substituting words with similar sounding words that have different,

often unconnected meanings, and thus creating a situation of confusion, misunderstanding and

amusement. Malapropism is used to convey that the

speaker/character is flustered, bothered, unaware or confused and as a result cannot employ proper

diction. A trick to using malapropism is to ensure that the two words (the original and the substitute) sound s imilar enough

for the reader to catch onto the intended switch and find humor in the result.

Example:

In the play Much Ado About

Nothing, noted playwright William Shakespeare’s character Dogberry says , "Our watch, sir, have indeed comprehended two auspicious persons." Instead, what the character means to say is “"Our watch, s ir, have indeed

apprehended two suspicious persons."

Metaphor Definition:

Metaphors are one of the most extensively used literary devices. A metaphor refers to a meaning or identity ascribed to one subject by way of another. In a metaphor, one

subject is implied to be another so as to draw a comparison between

their similarities and shared traits. The fi rst subject, which/who is the focus of the sentences is usually

compared to the second subject, which is used to convey/carry a degree of meaning that is used to characterize the first. The purpose

of us ing a metaphor is to take an identity or concept that we understand clearly (second subject)

and use i t to better understand the lesser-knownelement (the first

subject). Example:

“Henry was a lion on the battlefield”. This sentence suggests

that Henry fought so va liantly and bravely that he embodied all the personality tra its we attribute to the ferocious animal. This sentence

implies immediately that Henry was courageous and fearless, much like

the King of the Jungle.

Metonymy

Definition: Metonymy in literature refers to

the practice of not using the formal word for an object/subject and instead referring to i t by using

another word that is intricately l inked to the formal name/word. It

i s the practice of substituting the main word with a word that is closely linked to i t.

Example:

When we use the name “Washington D.C” we are ta lking about the U.S’ political hot seat by

referring to the political capital of the United States because all the s ignificant political institutions such

as the White House, Supreme Court, the U.S. Capitol and many

more are located her. The phrase “Washington D.C.” i s metonymy for the government of the U.S. in this case.

Mood Definition: The l iterary device ‘mood’ refers to

a definitive s tance the author adopts in shaping a specific

emotional perspective towards the subject of the literary work. It refers to the mental and emotional disposition of the author towards the subject, which in turn lends a particular character or atmosphere to the work. The final tone

achieved thus is instrumental in evoking specific, appropriate

responses from the reader. Example:

In Erich Segal’s Love Story, the

relationship of the two protagonists i s handled with such beauty, del icateness and sensitivity that the reader i s compelled to feel the

tria ls and tribulations of the characters.

Moti f Definition:

The l iterary device ‘motif’ is any element, subject, idea or concept that i s constantly present through the entire body of literature. Using

a moti f refers to the repetition of a specific theme dominating the

l i terary work. Motifs are very noticeable and play a significant role in defining the nature of the

s tory, the course of events and the very fabric of the literary piece.

Example:

In a ll the famed fairytales, the motif

of a ‘handsome prince’ falling in love with a ‘damsel in distress’ and the two being bothered by a wicked

s tep-mother/ evil witch/ beast and finally conquering a ll and l iving

‘happily ever after’ is a common moti f.

Another common motif is the s imple, pretty peasant girl or gi rl

from a modest background in fa i rytales discovering that she is actually a royal or noble by the end

of the ta le.

Negative Capability Definition: The use of negative capability in

l i terature is a concept promoted by poet John Keats, who was of the

opinion that literary achievers, especially poets, should be able to come to terms with the fact that

some matters might have to be left unsolved and uncertain. Keats was

of the opinion that some certainties were best left open to imagination and that the element of doubt and ambiguity added romanticism and specialty to a concept. Example:

The best references of the use of

negative capability in literature would be of Keats’ own works,

especially poems such as Ode on a Grecian Urn and Ode to a Nightingale.

Nemesis

Definition: In l i terature, the use of a nemesis refers to a situation of poetic

justice wherein the positive characters are rewarded and the negative characters are penalized. The word also sometimes refers to

the character or medium by which this justice is brought about as Nemesis was the patron goddess of vengeance according to classical

mythology. Example:

In the popular book series Harry Potter, the protagonist Harry Potter i s the nemesis of the evil Lord

Voldemort.

Onomatopoeia Definition: The term ‘onomatopoeia’ refers to

words whose very sound is very close to the sound they are meant to depict. In other words, it refers to sound words whose pronunciation to the actual sound/noise they represent. Example:

Words such as grunt, huff, buzz and snap are words whose

pronunciation sounds very s imilar to the actual sounds these words represent. In literature such words are useful in creating a stronger

mental image. For instance, sentences such as “the whispering of the forest trees” or “the hum of

a thousand bees” or “the cl ick of the door in the nighttime” create

vivid mental images.

Oxymoron

Definition: Oxymoron is a significant l iterary

device as it allows the author to use contradictory, contrasting concepts placed together in a manner that actually ends up making sense in a s trange, and slightly complex manner. An oxymoron is an interesting literary device because

i t helps to perceive a deeper level of truth and explore different layers of semantics while writing. Example: Sometimes we cherish things

of l i ttle va lue. He possessed a cold fi re in his eyes.

Paradox Definition: A paradox in literature refers to the

use of concepts/ ideas that are contradictory to one another, yet, when placed together they hold s ignificant value on several levels.

The uniqueness of paradoxes l ies in the fact that a deeper level of meaning and s ignificance is not revealed at first glace, but when it

does crystallize, i t provides astonishing insight.

Example:

High walls make not a palace; full coffers make not a king.

Pathetic Fallacy

Definition: Pathetic fallacy i s a type of literary device whereby the author ascribes

the human feelings of one or more of his/her characters to non-human objects or nature or phenomena. It i s a type of personification, and is known to occur more by accident and less on purpose. Example:

The softly whistling teapot informed him i t was time for

breakfast.

Periodic Structure Definition: In l i terature, the concept of a

periodic structure refers to a particular placement of sentence elements such as the main clause of

the sentence and/or i ts predicate are purposely held off and placed at

the end instead of at the beginning or their conventional positions. In such placements, the crux of the sentence’s meaning does not become clear to the reader until they reach the last part. While undeniably confusing at fi rst, a

periodic structure lends a flair of drama and romanticism to a

sentence and is greatly used in poetry. Example:

Instead of writing, “brokenhearted and forlorn she waited till the end of her days for his return” one may wri te, “for his return,

brokenhearted and forlorn, waited she till the end of her days”.

Periphrasis Definition: The term ‘periphrasis’ refers to the

use of excessive language and surplus words to convey a meaning that could otherwise be conveyed with fewer words and in more

direct a manner. The use of this l i terary device can be to embellish a sentence, to create a grander effect, to beat around the bush and

to draw attention away from the crux of the message being

conveyed. Example:

Instead of simply saying “I am

displeased with your behavior”, one can say, “the manner in which you have conducted yourself in my pres ence of late has caused me to

feel uncomfortable and has resulted in my feeling disgruntled and disappointed with you”.

Personification Definition: Personification is one of the most commonly used and recognized l i terary devices. It refers to the practice of attaching human tra its

and characteristics with inanimate objects, phenomena and animals. Example:

“The raging winds”

“The wise owl”

“The warm and comforting fire”

Plot Definition:

The plot usually refers to the sequence of events and happenings that make up a s tory. There is usually a pattern, unintended or

intentional, that threads the plot together. The plot basically refers to the main outcome and order of

the s tory. There is another kind of plot in literature as well; it refers to

the conflict or clash occurring as a part of the story. The conflict usually follows 3 regular formats: a)

characters in conflict with one another b) characters in conflict

with their surroundings and c) characters in conflict with themselves. Example:

Many date movies follow a similar

s imple plot. Boy meets girl, boy loses gi rl, boy wins girl back in the

end.

Point of View Definition:

In l i terature, the ‘point of view’ is a l i terary device that depicts the manner in which a s tory i s narrated/ depicted and who it is

that tells the story. Simply put, the point of view determines the angle

and perception of the story unfolding, and thus influences the tone in which the s tory takes place.

The point of view is instrumental in manipulating the reader’s

understanding of the narrative. In a way, the point of view can allow or withhold the reader access into the

greater reaches of the s tory. Two of the most common point of view techniques are the fi rst person, wherein the s tory i s told by the

narrator from his/ her s tandpoint and the third person wherein the narrator does not figure in the

events of the s tory and tells the s tory by referring to all characters

and places in the third person with thi rd person pronouns and proper nouns. Example:

In the popular Lord of the Rings book series, the s tories are narrated in the third person a nd all

happenings are described from an “outs ide the s tory” point of view.

Contrastingly, in the popular teen book series, Princess Diaries, the s tory i s told in the first person, by

the protagonist herself.

Polysyndeton Definition: In l i terature, the literary device

‘polysyndeton’ refers to the process of us ing conjunctions or connecting

words frequently in a sentence, placed very close to one another, as opposed to the usual norm of using

them sparsely, only where they are technically needed. The use of polysyndetons is primarily for adding dramatic effect as they have

a s trong rhetorical presence. Example:

For example:

a) Saying “here and there and

everywhere”, instead of simply saying “here, there and everywhere”.

b) “Marge and Susan and Anne and Daisy and Barry a ll planned to go for a picnic”, instead of “Marge, Susan, Anne, Daisy and Barry…”

emphasizes each of the individuals and ca lls attention to every person

one by one instead of assembling them as a group.

Portmanteau Definition:

In l i terature, this device refers to the practice of joining together two or more words in order to create an

enti rely new word. This i s often done in order to create a name or

word for something by combining the individual characteristics of 2 or more other words.

Example:

1. The word “smog” is a portmanteau that was built combining “fog” and “smoke” and

“smog” has the properties of both fog and smoke.

2. Liger= Lion + Tiger= A hybrid of the two feline species, possessing

characteristics of both.

Prologue Definition: A prologue can be understood to be

a sort of introduction to a s tory that usually sets the tone for the s tory and acts as a bit of a backgrounder

or a “sneak peek” into the story. Prologues are typically a narrative

‘spoken’ by one of the characters and not from the part of the author.

Example:

1. "The origin of this story i s..."

2. “It a l l began one day when…”

Puns Definition:

Puns are a very popular literary device wherein a word is used in a manner to suggest two or more

possible meanings. This is generally done to the effect of creating

humor or i rony or wryness. Puns can a lso refer to words that suggest meanings of similar-sounding

words . The trick is to make the reader have an “ah!” moment and discover 2 or more meanings. Example:

Santa’s helpers are known as subordinate Clauses.

Rhyme Scheme Definition: The rhyme scheme is the practice of rhyming words placed at the end of the l ines in the prose/ poetry. Rhyme scheme refers to the order

in which particular words rhyme. If the a l ternate words rhyme, it is an

“a -b-a-b” rhyme scheme, which means “a” is the rhyme for the lines 1 and 3 and “b” is the rhyme

affected in the lines 2 and 4. Example:

Roses are red (a)

Violets are blue (b)

Beautiful they a ll may be (c)

But I love you (b)

The above is an “a-b-c-b” rhyme

scheme.

Rhythm & Rhyme Definition: The concept of ‘rhythm and rhyme’

refers to a pattern of rhymes that is created by using words that

produce the same, or s imilar sounds. Rhythm and rhyme together refer to the recurrence of

s imilar sounds in prose and poetry, creating a musical, gentle effect. Example:

“I am a teapot

Short and s tout;

This is my handle

And this is my spout.

When the water’s boiling

Hear me shout;

Just l ift me up

And pour me out”

Sati re Definition: The use of satire in l iterature refers to the practice of making fun of a human weakness or character flaw.

The use of satire is often inclusive of a need or decision of correcting or bettering the character that is on the receiving end of the satire. In

general, even though satire might be humorous and may “make fun”, i ts purpose is not to entertain and amuse but actually to derive a

reaction of contempt from the reader.

Example:

The best example of satire in modern popculture is the TV series

Southpark that uses satire as it primary medium for drawing attention the flaws in society, especially American society at

present. The scripts and writing for the show are an excellent example of satire in written form.

Setting Definition: In l i terature, the word ‘setting’ is used to identify and establish the time, place and mood of the events of the s tory. It basically helps in

establishing where and when and under what ci rcumstances the story i s taking place.

Example:

In the first installment of the Harry

Potter series, a large part of the book takes place at the protagonist, Harry’s , aunt’s and uncle’s place, l iving in the “muggle” (non-magical) world with the “muggle” folks, and Harry i s unaware of his magical capabilities and blood. This setting

establishes the background that Harry has a non-magical childhood

with other “muggle” people and has no clue about his special powers or his parents and is raised

much l ike, actually worse than, regular people, till his 11th birthday.

Simile

Definition: Similes are one of the most

commonly used l iterary devices; referring to the practice of drawing para llels or comparisons between

two unrelated and dissimilar things, people, beings, places and concepts. By using similes a greater degree of meaning and

understanding is attached to an otherwise simple sentence. The reader i s able to better understand

the sentiment the author wishes to convey. Similes are marked by the

use of the words ‘as’ or ‘such as’ or ‘l ike’. Example:

He is like a mouse in front of the

teacher.

Spoonerism Definition: Spoonerism refers to the practice of

interchanging the first letters of some words in order to create new

words or even to create nonsensical words in order to create a humorous setting. While

they are often unintentional and known as a “slip of the tongue”, in l i terature they are welcomed as witty word-play. Example:

The phrase “flesh and blood” being spoken as a character as “blesh and

flood” in urgency and heightened emotion.

Stanza Definition: The term stanza refers to a single, related chunk of lines in poetry. It

bas ically refers to one unit or group of l ines, which forms one particular faction in poetry. The most basic

kind of stanza is usually 4 l ines per group, with the simplest rhyme

scheme “a-b-a-b” being followed. Example:

“The greedy paddy cat,

Chased after the mice;

She got so round and fat,

But i t tasted so nice”

Stream of consciousness

Definition: The phrase ‘stream of consciousness’ refers to an uninterrupted and unhindered

col lection and occurrence of thoughts and ideas in the conscious mind. In literature, the phrase

refers to the flow of these thoughts, with reference to a

particular character’s thinking process. This literary device is usually used in order to provide a

narrative in the form of the character’s thoughts instead of

us ing dialogue or description. Example:

Al l wri tings by Virginia Woolff are a good example of literary s tream of cons ciousness.

"Li fe is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the

end." The Common Reader (1925)

Suspense Definition: Suspense is the intense feeling that an audience goes through while waiting for the outcome of certain events. It basically leaves the reader holding their breath and wanting more information. The

amount of intensity in a suspenseful moment is why i t is

hard to put a book down. Without suspense, a reader would lose interest quickly in any s tory

because there is nothing that is making the reader ask, “What’s going to happen next?” In wri ting, there has to be a series of events that leads to a climax that captivates the audience and makes them tense and anxious to know what i s going to happen. Example:

A cl i ffhanger is a great way to create suspense. You remember when you were a kid and very

exci ted to watch those Saturday morning shows. You can probably

reca ll the feeling you had at the pit of your s tomach when, after about 25 minutes and lots of commercials, you were hoping to find out what happened to your favori te character. However, you didn’t get to find out. Instead they

would make the “Tune In Next Week” announcement and you

already knew that you would be there. Same time, same place. Suspense is a powerful literary tool

because, i f done correctly, you know your audience will be back for more and more.

Syl lepsis

Definition: The device syllepsis comes into play when a single word that influences or regulates two or more than two

other words needs to be comprehended individually and in l ight of every particular ensuing word. Syl lepsis is often used for a

comical, wry and witty effect. Example:

a) Jack lost his car keys and his cool.

b) Mary was unable to keep a check

on her children or her temper.

Symbol Definition: A symbol is literary device that

conta ins several layers of meaning, often concealed at first sight, and is

representative of several other aspects/ concepts/ tra its than those that are visible in the literal

trans lation alone. Symbol i s using an object or action that means

something more than its literal meaning. Example:

The phrase “a new dawn” does not ta lk only about the actual beginning of a new day but also signifies a new start, a fresh chance to begin

and the end of a previous tiring time.

Synecdoche Definition:

A synecdoche is a literary devices that us es a part of something to refer to the whole. It is somewhat

rhetorical in nature, where the enti re object i s represented by way

of a faction of it or a faction of the object i s symbolized by the full. Example:

“Weary feet in the walk of life”, does not refer to the feet actually being tired or painful; it i s symbolic of a long, hard s truggle through the

journey of life and feeling low, ti red, unoptimistic and ‘the walk of

l i fe’ does not represent an actual path or distance covered, instead refers to the entire sequence of life

events that has made the person ti red.

Synesthesia Definition:

Whi le the term synesthesia l iterally refers to a medical condition

wherein one or many of the sensory modalities become joint to

one another, in literature it refers to the depiction of a s trong connection, l ink or bond between the di fferent senses. Characters in

l i terature are sometimes described to be experiences synesthesia.

Synesthesia i s the conflation of the senses. Example:

The Sound of Blue by Hollu Payne which portrays synesthesia with respect to the Romantic ideal.

Syntax

Definition: Syntax in literature refers to the actual way in which words and sentences are placed together in the wri ting. Usually in the English language the syntax should follow a pattern of subject-verb-object agreement but sometimes authors play around with this to achieve a

lyrica l, rhythmic, rhetoric or questioning effect. It is not related to the act of choosing specific

words or even the meaning of each word or the overall meanings

conveyed by the sentences. Example:

The sentence "The man drives the car" would follow normal syntax in the English language. By changing the syntax to "The car drives the man", the sentence becomes

awkward.

Theme Definition: The theme of any l iterary work is

the base topic or focus that acts as a foundation for the entire l iterary

piece. The theme links all aspects of the l i terary work with one another and is basically the main subject.

The theme can be an enduring pattern or motif throughout the

l i terary work, occurring in a complex, long winding manner or i t can be short and succinct a nd

provide a certain insight into the s tory. Example:

The main theme in the play Romeo

and Juliet was love with smaller themes of sacrifice, tragedy, s truggle, hardship, devotion and so

on.

Tone Definition: The tone of a literary work is the perspective or attitude that the

author adopts with regards to a specific character, place or

development. Tone can portray a variety of emotions ranging from solemn, grave, and cri tical to witty,

wry and humorous. Tone helps the reader ascertain the writer’s

feelings towards a particular topic and this in turn influences the reader’s understanding of the s tory.

Example:

In her Harry Potter series, author

J.K. Rowl ing has taken an extremely pos itive, inspiring and uplifting tone

towards the idea of love and devotion.

Tragedy Definition:

In l i terature, the concept of tragedy refer to a series of unfortunate events by which one or more of the

l i terary characters in the story undergo several misfortunes, which

finally culminate into a disaster of ‘epic proportions’. Tragedy is generally built up in 5 s tages: a ) happy times b) the introduction of a problem c) the problem worsens to a cris is/ dilemma d) the characters are unable to prevent

the problem from taking over e) the problem results in some catastrophic, grave ending, which is the tragedy culminated. Example:

In the play Julius Caesar, the lead character is an ambitious, fearless and power hungry king who ignores a l l the signs and does not heed the advice of the well-meaning: finally

being stabbed to death by his own best friend and advisor Brutus. This moment has been immortalized by the phrase “Eu tu Brutus?”,

wherein Caesar realizes that he has finally been defeated, and that too through betrayal.

Understatement

Definition: This literary device refers to the practice of drawing attention to a

fact that is a lready obvious and noticeable. Understating a fact i s

usually done by way of sarcasm, i rony, wryness or any other form of dry humor. Understating something i s akin to exaggerating i ts

obviousness as a means of humor. Example:

The phrase, “Oh! I wonder i f he could get any later; I am free all day long”. Said in a sarcastic tone i t

indicates that the speaker obviously means the opposite of the literal meaning.

Verisimilitude

Definition: Verisimilitude is an interesting l i terary device wherein the quality of seeming truthfulness or verity i s ascribed to a person, notion, concept, s tatement or event. The quality of the stated seeming to be true and correct and accurate is referred to as verisimilitude.

Example:

The bestseller ‘Diary of Anne Frank’

lent verisimilitude to the suffering of the Jewish people during the Holocaust.

Verse Definition:

The l iterary term ‘verse’ i s used to refer to any single, lone line of a

poetry composition. A metrical wri ting line is known as verse. The word can however, also refer to a s tanza or any other part of the poetry. Example:

A s ingle line or s tanze in poetry

would be an example of verse.

Li terature Resources

Anthropological: Tends to focus on aspects of everyday life in various cultures (i.e. folklore, ri tua l, celebrations, traditions). You might ask, "What is the everyday social function of this

text? How has i t been transmitted (orally/written)? Does it reflect folk culture?" Top

Archetypal: Relates to Psychoanalytical Cri ticism in some ways(see below). Developed by

Carl Jung, this approach accepts the idea of the unconscious mind. However, unlike Sigmund Freud and other cri tics, Jungians argue that part of the unconscious isshared by a l l people. From this perspective the term "collective unconscious" developed, a term representing the memories of human products and activities (found in myths, symbols,

ri tua ls, l iteratures) and reproduced as archetypes. Archetypes are figures or patterns recurring in works of the imagination, and can be divided into three categories. Archetypal characters include (but are not limited to): the hero, the villain, the outcast, the femme fatale, and the s tar-crossed lovers.Archetypal

s i tuations include (but are not limited to): the quest, the journal, death and rebirth, and the task. Archetypal symbols and associations include polarities: l ight/dark, water/desert,

height/depth, spring/winter. It i s important to note two things. First, works may contain multiple archetypes. Second, not everything i s an archetype. A balance between these two extremes can be very

di fficult to achieve. Looking for recurring patterns within a piece or within a collection of related stories can be useful in using this approach.

For further reading: Northrop Frye's The Educated Imagination and Anatomy of Cri ticism. Top

Biographical: Relates the author's life and thoughts to her works. As these tend to reflect the period in which she lived, biographical criticism may be an important aspect of the

(New) Historical approach (see below). The biographical approach a llows one to better understand elements within a work, as well as to relate works to authorial intention and audience. You might ask, "How does the text reflect the author's life? Is this text an

extension of the author's position on issues in the author's l ife?" Biographical cri ticism has two weaknesses that should be avoided. First, avoid equating

the work's content with the author's life (or the character with the author); they are not necessarily the same. Second, avoid less-than-credible sources of information, particularly works that tend to be highly speculative or controversial unless verified by several sources. (Some of the recent biographies on Thomas Jefferson might serve as an example of this pi tfall.) For further reading: Charles Dickens: A Cri tical Introduction by K. J. Fielding; Henry James: His Life and Writings by F. W. Duppee; and The Far Side of Paradise: A Biography of F. Scott Fi tzgerald by Arthur Mizener.

Narratological: Concerns i tself with the s tructure of narrative --how events are constructed and through what point of view. You might ask, "How is the narrative of this work (fiction, poetry, fi lm) pieced together? Who or what is narrating?" This considers the narrator not

necessarily as a person, but more as a window through which one sees a constructed rea lity. This can range from someone telling a ta le to a seemingly objective camera: "To

what extent is the narrative mediated?" Top

New Cri ticism: Unlike biographical and historical approaches, a New Cri tic approach contends that literature need have little or no connection with the author's intention, life, or social/historical situation.Everything needed to analyze the work is contained within the text. New Cri tics also tend to examine the physical qualities of the text in a "scientific matter" that examines language and literary conventions (e.g. rhyme, meter, alliteration, plot, point of view, etc.). It is s imilar, though not identical, to Structuralism in its emphasis on the text i tself (see below). For further reading: The New Cri ticism by John Crow Ransom.

Top

(New) Historicism: May approach a text from numerous perspectives, but a ll perspectives tend to reflect a concern with the period in which a text i s produced and/or read (including

contemporary work). No "history" can be truly objective or comprehensive because history i s constantly wri tten and rewritten; however, studying the historical context of a work, particularly in contrast with that in which it i s read, can i lluminate our biases and hopefully

enable us to understand the text (and the culture, context, ourselves) better.

New Historicism is concerned with relating the idea of a text to other key concepts: cul ture, discourse, ideology, the self, and history. New Historicists examine intersections of text, reader, and history and with a special emphasis on literature as a cultural text. New His toricists a lso examine the relationship of literature to the power s tructures of society.

His torical research might include Biography (see above), reception studies, influence s tudies, or even a technological approach to the medium (filmmaking, printing, the music

industry, computers and the WWW). It has also been utilized with Reader-Response cri ticism (see below). You might ask, "How does the text embody a history of i ts time? Is this text a useful historical document?"

For further reading: Columbia Li terary History of the United States, edited by Emory El liot, and The Li terary History of England, edited by Albert C. Baugh.

Top

Post-Structuralism: While accepting Structuralism and Sausseure's analysis of language (see Structuralism below), post-structuralism considers the relationship between language and meaning, ultimately rejecting any certainty of meaning. Jacques Derrida, one of the most influential post-structuralism, called his critical method "deconstruction." Using

deconstruction, the reader analyzes the text and especially i ts language to expose i ts ambiguity and upset the connection between the text and the "real world." You might ini tially ask, "How does the language/meaning in this text contradict i tself? How can a

work be interpreted in multiple ways?" For further reading: From the New Cri ticism to Deconstruction by Art Berman

and Deconstruction: Theory and Practice by Christopher Norris. Top

Psychoanalytic: Such cri ticism aims at uncovering the working of the human mind--especially the expression of the unconscious. Possibilities include analyzing a text l ike a dream, looking for symbolism and repressed meaning, or developing a psychological analysis of a character. Three ideas found in the work of Sigmund Freud are particularly useful: the dominance of the unconscious mind over the conscious, the expression of the unconscious mind through symbols (often in dreams), and sexuality as a powerful force for motivating human behavior. Psychoanalytic criticism can be applied to either the author/text relationship or

to the reader/text relationship. You might ask, "How is this text use or represent the unconscious mind: of the author, the characters, the reader?"

For further reading: Li terature and Psychoanalysis, edited by Edith Kurzweil and William Phi l lips, and The Purloined Poe: Lacan, Derrida and Psychoanalytic Reading, edited by John P. Mul ler and William J. Richardson.

Top

Reader-Response Cri ticism: Studies the interaction of reader with text, holding the text as incompleteuntil i t is read. This cri tical approach can be, and often is, combined with other approaches (such as Psychoanalytical and Historical) but challenges the self -contained focus of New Cri ticism or the claim of meaninglessness embraced by Post-Structuralism. For further reading: The Reader in the Text: Essays on Audience and Interpretation ,edited by Susan R. Suleiman and Inge Crossman, and Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority

of Interpretive Communities by Stanley Fish. Top

Semiotics: Cri tiques the use of language, preferably in texts that comment on the nature of

language (see Structuralism). To the semiotician, language is an arbitrary but shared system of assigned meanings.You might ask, "How does this text cri tique language? Does it break the rules of language usage? Why?" Or i f the text doesn't seem to comment on its

own language, "How does the language used reflect an unawareness of language as an

ideological tool?" Top

Social Cri ticism: Concerns i tself with the social function of texts, thus consisting of several categories, and analyzes social structure, power, politics, and agency. Social criticism is

s imilar to historical cri ticism in recognizing literature as a reflection of environment. There are several social movements, but Marxism, Feminism and Gender Studies, and Green Theory are prevalent.

Marxism is concerned with labor practices, class theories, and economics, especially as concerned with the struggles of the poor and oppressed. A Marxist might ask, "How are

classes stratified/defined in this text? Does this text reflect an economic ideology? What is the atti tude toward labor furthered by this text?" For further reading: Marx, Engels, and the Poets: Origins of Marxist Literary Cri ticism by

Peter Demetz and Marxism and Li terary Cri ticism by Terry Eagleton. Feminist Cri ticism examine works by and about women. Gender Cri ticism evolved out of feminism to address issues of masculinity/femininity as binaries, sexual orientation, hetereosexism, and differences in sexes. Both are political activities concerned with fair

representation and treatment of people. A cri tcic using Feminist Studies or Gender Studies (sometimes also known as Queer Studies) might ask, "How is gender constructed or deconstructed in this text? Is the view of the text gendered or sexist?"

For further reading: The New Feminist Cri ticism: Essays on Women, Li terature, and Theory, edited by Elaine Showalter, and The Gay and Lesbian Studies Reader, edited by

Henry Avelove, et al. A Green Cri tic might ask, "Of what priority i s conservation in this text? What is the relationship between humankind and Nature?" Top

Structura lism: Like New Cri ticism, Structuralism concentrates on elements within works of l i terature without focusing on historical, social, and biographical influences. Structuralism, however, is grounded in linguistics and developed by Ferdinand de Sausseure. Sausseure's work argues that language is a complete, self-contained system and should be studied as such. Sausseure also claimed that language is a system of signs. When applied to l i terature, this form of criticism is generally known as Semiotics (see above).

For further reading: Semiotic and Structural Analyses of Fiction: An Introduction and a Survey of Applications by Leonard Orr; Structuralism in Li terature: An Introduction by

Robert Scholes; andThe Role of the Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts by Umberto Eco. The Purpose of Cri ticism:

Li terary cri ticism has at least three primary purposes. (1) To help us resolve a question, problem, or difficulty in the reading. The historical approach, for instance, might be helpful in addressing a problem in Thomas Otway's play Venice Preserv'd.

Why are the conspirators, despite the horrible, bloody details of their obviously brutish plan,

portrayed in a sympathetic l ight? If we look at the author and his

time, we see that he was a Tory whose play was performed in the wake of the Popish Plot and the

Exclus ion Bill Crisis, and that there

are obvious similarities between the Conspiracy in the play and the Popish Plot in history. The Tories would never approve of the

bloody Popish Plot, but they nonetheless sympathized with the

plotters for the way they were abused by the Tory enemy, the Whigs. Thus it makes sense for

Otway to condemn the conspiracy i tself in Vencie Preserv'd without

condemning the conspirators themselves. (2) To help us decide which is the

better of two conflicting readings. A formalist approach might enable us to choose between a reading which sees the dissolution of

society in Lord of the Flies as being caused by too strict a suppression of the "bestial" side of man and

one which sees i t as resulting from too l i ttle suppression. We can look

to the text and ask: What textual evidence is there for the suppression or indulgence of the "bestial" side of man? Does Ralph suppress Jack when he tries to indulge his bestial side in hunting? Does i t appear from the text that an imposition of s tricter law and order would have prevented the breakdown? Did it work in the "grownup" world of the novel? (3) To enable us to form

judgments about literature. One of the purposes of cri ticism is

to judge i f a work is any good or not. For instance, we might use a formalist approach to argue that a

John Donne poem is of high quality because i t contains numerous intricate conceits that are well sustained. Or, we might use the mimetic approach to argue that The West Indian is a poor play because it fails to paint a rea listic picture of the world. Back to Top

His torical / Biographical Approach: Definition:

His torical / Biographical cri tics see works as the reflection of an

author's life and times (or of the characters' life and times). They bel ieve i t is necessary to know

about the author and the political,

economical, and sociological context of his times in order to truly understand his works. Advantages:

This approach works well for some works --like those of Alexander

Pope, John Dryden, and Milton--which are obviously political in nature. One must know Mi lton

was blind, for instance, for "On His Bl indness" to have any meaning.

And one must know something about the Exclusion Bill Crisis to appreciate John Dryden's

"Absalom and Achitophel." It a lso i s necessary to take a historical approach in order to place a l lusions in there proper classical,

pol itical, or biblical background. Disadvantages: New Cri tics refer to the historical /

biographical cri tic's belief that the meaning or va lue of a work may

be determined by the author's intention as "the intentional fa l lacy." They believe that this approach tends to reduce art to the level of biography and make it relative (to the times) rather than universal. Sample Papers: The Ideal Source for a Tory Message: Thomas Otway's Venice Preserv'd Motivation in Sandra Cisneros's

"Never Marry a Mexican" Back to Top

Moral / Philosophical Approach: Definition:

Moral / philosophical cri tics bel ieve that the larger purpose of l i terature is to teach morality and to probe philosophical issues. Practi tioners: Matthew Arnold -- argued works must have "high seriousness" Plato -- insisted l iterature must exhibit moralism and utilitarianism

Horace - felt l iterature should be "del ightful and instructive" Advantages:

This approach is useful for such works as Alexander Pope's "An

Essay on Man," which does present an obvious moral phi losophy. It is a lso useful when

cons idering the themes of works

(for example, man's inhumanity to man in Mark Twain's Huckelberry Finn). Finally, i t does not view l i terature merely as "art" isolated

from a l l moral implications; i t recognizes that l iterature can

affect readers, whether subtly or di rectly, and that the message of a work--and not just the decorous

vehicle for that message--is important.

Disadvantages: Detractors argue that such an approach can be too

"judgmental." Some believe l i terature should be judged primarily (i f not solely) on its artistic merits, not its moral or

phi losophical content. See Also: Read my introduction to my

papers for a justification of a Chris tian cri tical approach to

l i terature. Back to Top

Mimetic Approach: Definition: This can be closely related to the moral / philosophical approach, but i s somewhat broader. Mimetic cri tics ask how well the work of l i terature accords with the real world. Is it accurate? Is it correct? Is i t moral? Does i t show how

people really act? As such, mimetic criticism can include

some forms of moral / phi losophical cri ticism, psychological cri ticism, and

feminist criticism. Back to Top

Formalism / New Cri ticism My article on formalism is ava ilable here. Please return to this page using the back arrow of your browser when you are done reading the article. Below are two

samples of this approach. One is on my website, and the other has been contributed as an article to

another website. Sample Papers:

Sound in William Shakespeare's The Tempest A Formalist Reading of Sandra

Cisneros's "Woman Hollering

Creek" Back to Top

Psychological Approach Definition:

Psychological cri tics view works through the lens of psychology. They look either at the

psychological motivations of the characters or of the authors

themselves, a lthough the former i s generally considered a more respectable approach. Most

frequently, psychological cri tics apply Freudian psychology to works , but other approaches (such as a Jungian approach) also exist.

Freudian Approach: A Freudian approach often includes pinpointing the

influences of a character's id (the instinctual, pleasure seeking part

of the mind), superego (the part of the mind that represses the id's impulses) and the ego (the part of the mind that controls but does not repress the id's impulses, releasing them in a healthy way). Freudian cri tics l ike to point out the sexual implications of symbols and imagery, s ince Freud's bel ieved that a ll human behavior i s motivated by sexuality. They tend to see concave images, such

as ponds, flowers, cups, and caves as female symbols; whereas

objects that are longer than they are wide are usually seen as phallic symbols. Dancing, riding,

and flying are associated with sexual pleasure. Water is usually associated with birth, the female principle, the maternal, the womb, and the death wish. Freudian cri tics occasionally discern the presence of an Oedipus complex (a boy's unconscious riva l ry with his father for the love

of his mother) in the male characters of certain works, such as Hamlet. They may a lso refer to

Freud's psychology of child development, which includes

the ora l stage, the anal s tage, and the genital s tage. Jungian Approach:

Jung is also an influential force in myth (archetypal) cri ticism. Psychological cri tics are generally concerned with his concept of the

process of individuation (the process of discovering what makes

one different form everyone else). Jung labeled three parts of the self: the shadow, or the darker,

unconscious self (usually the vi l lain in l iterature); the persona,

or a man's social personality (usually the hero); and the anima, or a man's "soul image" (usually

the heroine). A neurosisoccurs when someone fails to assimilate one of these unconscious components into his conscious

and projects it on someone else. The persona must be flexible and be able to balance the

components of the psyche. Practi tioners:

Ernest Jones, Otto Rank, Marie Boaparte, and others Advantages: It can be a useful tool for understanding some works, such as Henry James The Turning of the Screw, in which characters obviously have psychological i s sues. Like the biographical approach, knowing something about a writer's psychological make up can give us insight into

his work. Disadvantages:

Psychological cri ticism can turn a work into little more than a psychological case s tudy,

neglecting to view it as a piece of art. Cri tics sometimes attempt to diagnose long dead authors based on their works, which is perhaps not the best evidence of their psychology. Cri tics tend to see sex in everything, exaggerating this aspect of literature. Finally, some works do not lend themselves

readily to this approach. Examples: (1) A psychological approach to

John Mi lton's Samson Agonisties might suggest that the

shorning of Samson's locks is symbolic of his castration at the hands of Dalila and that the

fighting words he exchanges with

Harapha constitute a reassertion of his manhood. Psychological cri tics might see Samson's bondage as a symbol of his sexual

impotency, and his destruction of the Phi listine temple and the

ki l ling of himself and many others as a final orgasmic event (since death and sex are often closely

associated in Freudian psychology). The total absence of

Samson's mother in Samson Agonisties would make it difficult to argue anything regarding the

Oedipus complex, but Samson refusal to be cared for by his father and his remorse over failing to rule Dalila may be seen as

indicative of his own fears regarding his sexuality. (2) A psychological approach to

"The Si lence of the Llano" would a l low us to look into the

motivations of Rafael--it would a l low us to examine the effects of i solation and loneliness on his character and provide some reasoning for why he might chose to establish an incestuous relationship with his daughter. A specifically Freudian approach will tune us in to the relevant symbolism which will enable us to better understand the conclusion. For instance, with such a mind

frame, we can immediately recognize that Rafael's s tatement

to his daughter "I will turn the earth for you. The seeds will grow" is the establishment of a sexual

relationship that will result in chi ldren. We can see the water in which she bathes as symbolic of that bi rth that is to come. Sample Paper: A Freudian Approach to Erin McGraw's "A Thief" Back to Top

Mythological / Archetypal / Symbol ic Note: "Symbolic" approaches may

a lso fall under the category of formalism because they involve a

close reading of the text. Myth cri ticism generally has broader, more universal applications than

symbolic cri ticism, although both

assume that certain images have a fa i rly universal a ffect on readers. Definition: A mythological / archetypal

approach to literature assumes that there is a collection of

symbols, images, characters, and moti fs (i.e. archetypes) that evokes basically the same

response in all people. According to the psychologist Carl Jung,

mankind possesses a "collective unconscious" that contains these archetypes and that is common to

a l l of humanity. Myth cri tics identify these archetypal patterns and discuss how they function in the works. They believe that these

archetypes are the source of much of l i terature's power. Some Archetypes (See A

Handbook of Cri tical Approaches to Li terature for a complete l ist):

archetypal women - the Good Mother, the Terrible Mother, and the Soul Mate (such as the Virgin Mary)

water - creation, birth-

death-resurrection, purification, redemption, fertility, growth

garden - paradise (Eden), innocence, fertility

desert - spiritual emptiness, death, hopelessness

red - blood, sacrifice, passion, disorder

green - growth, fertility

black - chaos, death, evil

serpent - evil, sensuality,

mystery, wisdom, destruction

seven - perfection

shadow, persona, and anima (see psychological cri ticism)

hero archetype - The hero i s involved in a quest (in

which he overcomes obstacles). He experiences initiation (involving a

separation, transformation, and return), and finally he serves as a scapegoat, that is, he dies to atone. Practi tioners:

Maud Bodkin, Bettina L. Knapp, and others. Advantages:

Provides a universalistic approach to l i terature and identifies a reason why certain literature may survive the test of time. It works

wel l with works that are highly symbolic.

Disadvantages: Li terature may become little more than a vehicle for archetypes, and

this approach may ignore the "art" of l i terature.

Examples: (1) In Go Down, Moses by William Faulkner, for example, we might

view Isaac McCaslin's repudiation of the land as an attempt to deny the existence of his archetypal shadow--that dark part of him that

maintains some degree of compl icity in slavery. When he sees the granddaughter of Jim,

and can barely tell she is black, his horri fied reaction to the

miscegenation of the races may be indicative of his shadow's (his deeply racist dark s ide's) emergence. (2) In Herman Melville's Moby Dick, Fedallah can be seen as Ahab's shadow, his defiant pagan s ide wholly unrestrained. Numerous archetypes appear in Moby Dick. The sea is associated both with spiritual mystery (Ahab is ultimately on a spiritual quest to

defy God because evil exists) and with death and rebirth (all but

Ishmael die at sea, but Ahab's death as if crucified i s suggestive of rebirth). Three is symbolic of

spiritual awareness; thus we see numerous triads inMoby Dick, including Ahab's three mysterious crew members and the three harpooners. (3) In "The Silence of the Llano" by Rudolfo Anaya, a mythological / archetypal approach would a llow us to examine the archetypes that

i l licit similar reactions in most readers. We can see how Anaya is drawing on the archetype of water

to imply purification (when Rita bathes after her period) and

ferti lity and growth (when Rita washes before the incestuous relationship is established). The

red blood Rita washes away ca lls

up vis ions of violent passions, which will be evidenced in the rape. The garden conjures up images of innocence, unspoiled

beauty, and fertility. Thus, the reader can sense in the end that a

s tate of innocence has been regained and that growth will ensue. This approach, however, is

l imited in that by assuming it, the cri tic may begin to view the story

not as a work within itself, but merely as a vessel for transmitting these archetypes . He may a lso

overlook the possibility that some symbols are not associated with their archetype; for instance, the sun, which normally implies the

passage of time, seems in its intensity in the llano to actually suggest a s lowing down of time, a

near s tatic s tate in the llano. Sample Paper:

A Cata logue of Symbols in Kate Chopin's The Awakening Back to Top

Feminist Approach Definition: Feminist criticism is concerned with the impact of gender on wri ting and reading. It usually begins with a critique of patriarchal culture. It is concerned with the place of female wri ters in

the cannon. Finally, i t includes a search for a feminine theory or

approach to texts. Feminist cri ticism is political and often revis ionist. Feminists often argue

that male fears are portrayed through female characters. They may argue that gender determines everything, or just the opposite: that a ll gender differences are imposed by society, and gender determines nothing. Ela ine Showalter's Theory: In A Li terature of Their Own,

Ela ine Showalter argued that l i terary subcultures a ll go through three major phases of

development. For literature by or about women, she labels these

s tages the Feminine, Feminist, and Female: (1) Feminine Stage - involves

"imitation of the prevailing modes

of the dominant tradition" and "internalization of i ts s tandards." (2) Feminist Stage - involves "protest against these standards

and va lues and advocacy of minority rights...."

(3) Female Stage - this is the "phase of self-discovery, a turning inwards freed from some of the

dependency of opposition, a search for identity."

Practi tioners: El len Mores, Sandra Gilbert, Elaine Showalter, Nina Baym, etc.

Advantages: Women have been somewhat underrepresented in the traditional cannon, and a feminist

approach to literature redresses this problem. Disadvantages:

Feminist turn literary cri ticism into a pol itical battlefield and overlook

the meri ts of works they consider "patriarchal." When arguing for a dis tinct feminine writing style, they tend to relegate women's l i terature to a ghetto s tatus; this in turn prevents female literature from being naturally included in the l i terary cannon. The feminist approach is often too theoretical. Example: Showalter's three stages of feminine, feminist, and female are

identifiable in the life of Cleófilas in Sandra Cisneros's "Woman

Hol lering Creek." Cleófilas begins to internalize the paternalistic va lues of the society

in which she l ives at least as early as the ice house scene. She "accompanies her husband," as is expected of her (48). Since women should be seen and not heard in a paternalistic society, she "sits mute beside their conversation" (48). She goes through all of the motions that are expected of her,

laughing "at the appropriate moments" (48). She submits, i f unhappily, to the rule of her

husband, "this man, this father, this rival, this keeper, this lord,

this master, this husband till kingdom come" (49). Yet Cleófilas gradually begins to

emerge from the feminine stage

into the feminist stage, where she begins to revolt and advocate for her own rights. It begins with "[a] doubt. Slender as a hair" (50).

When she returns from the hospital with her new son,

something seems different. "No. Her imagination. The house was the same as always. Nothing" (50).

This is true because the house is not di fferent; i t is Cleófilas who

has begun to change. Perhaps giving birth to a child has made her aware of the power and

importance women possess. She begins to think of returning home, but i s not ready for the possibility yet. It would be "a disgrace" (50).

She begins to internally protest aga inst the society, thinking about the town "with i ts silly pride for a

bronze pecan" and the fact that there i s "nothing, nothing, nothing

of interest" (50). The patriarchal society, with its ice house, city ha l l, liquor stores, and bail bonds i s of no interest to her. She is upset that the town is built so that "you have to depend on husbands" (51). Though her husband says she is "exaggerating," she seems to be becoming convinced that her society is a bad one, where men ki l l their wives with impunity. "It

seemed the newspapers were full of such s tories. This woman found

on the s ide of the interstate. This one pushed from a moving car . . ." (52). Al though she does nothing

when he throws a book at her, Cleófilas does (if only meekly) ins ist that he take her to the doctor. And there she solidifies her internal rebellion with actions: she leaves her husband with Felice to return to Mexico. Fel ice is actually more representative of the third,

female, stage than Cleófilas, but the fact that Cleófilas enjoys her company suggests that when she

returns to Mexico, she may seek to enter that third stage herself.

Fel ice is not phalocentric--she i s not interested in revolting against men, she simply does not need

them. She doesn't have a husband

and she owns her own car. "The pickup was hers. She herself had chosen it. She herself was paying for i t" (55). Felice i s most likely a

part of a community of women; she is certainly friends with the

nurse Graciela. Cleófilas is attracted to Felice, who "was l ike no woman she'd ever met" (55).

At home, in Mexico, Cleófilas recounts the story of Felice's

yel l ing when they crossed the creek. "Just like that. Who would've thought?" (56). Cleófilas

seems to have enjoyed her company and has kept the experience in her mind. Felice's laughter, "gurgling out of her own

throat, a long ribbon of laughter, l ike water" suggests that Felice had completed the self-discovery

s tage. (Water is often symbolic of rebirth.) Cleófilas has witnessed

the third stage in Felice, and it i s up to her whether she will enter i t or regress to the feminine stage and internalize the paternalistic va lues of her father and brothers with whom she is now living. Back to Top

Reader Response Cri ticism My article on reader response cri ticism is available here. Please return to this page using the back

arrow of your browser when you are done reading the article.

Back to Top

Miscellaneous

Aris totle (Augustine) - reality in concrete substance vs . Plato (Aquinas) - reality in abstract ideal forms dramatic unities - rules governing classical dramas requiring the unity of action, time, and place (The idea was based on a Renaissance misinterpretation of

passages in Aristotle's Poetic.) pathetic fallacy - Ruskin - attributing human traits to

nonhuman objects fancy - Coleridge -- combining

several known properties into new combinations

imagination - using known properties to create a whole that i s entirely new Pater: Aesthetic experience

permits the greatest intensification of each moment -

"Of such wisdom, the poetic passion, the desire of beauty, the love of art for its own sake, has

most." Longinus: emphasis on greatness

of sentiments - the sublime Goethe: "The poet makes himself a seer by a long, prodigious, and

rational disordering of all the senses." Howells: "Our novelists..concern themselves with the more smiling

aspect of life, which are the more American." a lso "When man is at his very best, he is a sort of low

grade nickel-plated angel." Morris : "Art was once the

common possession of the whole people..today..art i s only enjoyed...by comparatively few persons...the rich and the parasites that minister to them." Sweetness and Light: Delight and Instruction (in reference to the Ancients) Newman: "I say that a cultivated intellect, because i t is a good in i tself, brings with it a power and a grace to every work."

Cri tica l Approaches to Li terature

Pla in text version of this

document.

Described below are nine common

cri tical approaches to the l i terature. Quotations are from X.J. Kennedy and Dana

Gioia’sLiterature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama,

Sixth Edition (New York: HarperCollins, 1995), pages 1790-1818.

Formalist Cri ticism: This approach regards literature as “a unique form of human knowledge that needs to be examined on i ts own

terms.” Al l the elements necessary for understanding the work are

conta ined within the work itself.

Of particular interest to the formalist critic are the elements

of form—style, s tructure, tone, imagery, etc.—that are found

within the text. A primary goal for formalist critics is to determine how such elements work together with the text’s content to shape its

effects upon readers. Biographical Cri ticism: This

approach “begins with the simple but central insight that l iterature i s wri tten by actual people and

that understanding an author’s life can help readers more thoroughly

comprehend the work.” Hence, i t often affords a practical method by which readers can better

understand a text. However, a biographical cri tic must be careful not to take the biographical facts of a wri ter’s life too far in

cri ticizing the works of that writer: the biographical cri tic “focuses on expl icating the literary work by

us ing the insight provided by knowledge of the author’s l ife....

[B]iographical data should amplify the meaning of the text, not drown i t out with irrelevant material.” His torical Cri ticism: This approach “seeks to understand a literary work by investigating the social, cul tural, and intellectual context that produced it—a context that necessarily includes the artist’s biography and milieu.” A key goal for his torical critics is to

understand the effect of a l iterary work upon its original readers.

Gender Cri ticism: This approach “examines how sexual identity influences the creation and

reception of literary works.” Originally an offshoot of feminist movements, gender cri ticism today includes a number of approaches, including the so-ca l led “masculinist” approach recently advocated by poet Robert Bly. The bulk of gender cri ticism, however, is feminist and takes as a

centra l precept that the patriarchal attitudes that have dominated western thought have

resulted, consciously or unconsciously, in literature “full of

unexamined ‘male-produced’ assumptions.” Feminist cri ticism attempts to correct this imbalance

by analyzing and combatting such

atti tudes—by questioning, for example, why none of the characters in Shakespeare’s play Othello ever challenge the

right of a husband to murder a wi fe accused of adultery. Other

goals of feminist cri tics include “analyzing how sexual identity influences the reader of a text”

and “examin*ing+ how the images of men and women in imaginative

l i terature reflect or reject the social forces that have historically kept the sexes from achieving

tota l equality.” Psychological Cri ticism: This approach reflects the effect that modern psychology has had upon

both l iterature and literary cri ticism. Fundamental figures in psychological cri ticism include

Sigmund Freud, whose “psychoanalytic theories changed

our notions of human behavior by exploring new or controversial areas l ike wish-fulfillment, sexuality, the unconscious, and repression” as well as expanding our understanding of how “language and symbols operate by demonstrating their ability to reflect unconscious fears or des ires”; and Carl Jung, whose theories about the unconscious are a lso a key foundation

of Mythological Cri ticism. Psychological cri ticism has a

number of approaches, but in general, it usually employs one (or more) of three approaches:

1. An investigation of “the creative process of the artist: what is the nature of l i terary genius and how does it relate to normal mental functions?” 2. The psychological s tudy of a particular artist, usually noting how an

author’s biographical ci rcumstances affect or influence their motivations and/or behavior.

3. The analysis of fictional characters using the

language and methods of psychology. Sociological Cri ticism: This

approach “examines literature in

the cul tural, economic and pol itical context in which it is written or received,” exploring the relationships between the artist

and society. Sometimes it examines the artist’s society to

better understand the author’s l i terary works; other times, it may examine the representation of

such societal elements within the l i terature itself. One influential

type of sociological cri ticism is Marxist cri ticism, which focuses on the economic and political

elements of art, often emphasizing the ideological content of literature; because Marxis t cri ticism often argues that

a l l art is political, either chal lenging or endorsing (by s i lence) the s tatus quo, i t is

frequently eva luative and judgmental, a tendency that “can

lead to reductive judgment, as when Soviet cri tics rated Jack London better than William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Edi th Wharton, and Henry James, because he illustrated the principles of class struggle more clearly.” Nonetheless, Marxist cri ticism “can illuminate political and economic dimensions of l i terature other approaches overlook.”

Mythological Cri ticism: This approach emphasizes “the

recurrent universal patterns underlying most l iterary works.” Combining the insights from

anthropology, psychology, history, and comparative religion, mythological criticism “explores the artist’s common humanity by tracing how the individual imagination uses myths and symbols common to different cultures and epochs.” One key concept in mythlogical cri ticism is

the archetype, “a symbol, character, situation, or image that evokes a deep universal

response,” which entered literary cri ticism from Swiss psychologist

Carl Jung. According to Jung, all individuals share a “‘collective unconscious,’ a set of primal

memories common to the human

race, existing below each person’s conscious mind”—often deriving from primordial phenomena such as the sun, moon, fire, night, and

blood, archetypes according to Jung “trigger the collective

unconscious.” Another cri tic, Northrop Frye, defined archetypes in a more l imited way as “a

symbol, usually an image, which recurs often enough in literature

to be recognizable as an element of one’s literary experience as a whole.” Regardless of the

definition of archetype they use, mythological critics tend to view l i terary works in the broader context of works sharing a s imilar

pattern. Reader-Response Cri ticism: This approach takes as a fundamental

tenet that “literature” exists not as an artifact upon a printed page

but as a transaction between the phys ical text and the mind of a reader. It attempts “to describe what happens in the reader’s mind while interpreting a text” and reflects that reading, like wri ting, is a creative process. According to reader-response cri tics , literary texts do not “conta in” a meaning; meanings derive only from the act of individual readings. Hence, two

di fferent readers may derive completely different

interpretations of the same l i terary text; l ikewise, a reader who re-reads a work years later

may find the work shockingly di fferent. Reader-response cri ticism, then, emphasizes how “rel igious, cultural, and social values affect readings; i t also overlaps with gender cri ticism in exploring how men and women read the same text with different assumptions.” Though this

approach rejects the notion that a s ingle “correct” reading exists for a l i terary work, it does not

cons ider a ll readings permissible: “Each text creates l imits to its

possible interpretations.” Deconstructionist Cri ticism: This approach “rejects the traditional

assumption that language can

accurately represent reality.” Deconstructionist cri tics regard language as a fundamentally unstable medium—the words

“tree” or “dog,” for instance, undoubtedly conjure up different

mental images for different people—and therefore, because l i terature is made up of words,

l i terature possesses no fixed, s ingle meaning. According to critic

Paul de Man, deconstructionists ins ist on “the impossibility of making the actual expression

coincide with what has to be expressed, of making the actual s igns [i.e., words] coincide with what i s signified.” As a result,

deconstructionist cri tics tend to emphasize not what is being said but how language is used in a text.

The methods of this approach tend to resemble those

of formalist cri ticism, but whereas formalists’ primary goal is to locate unity within a text, “how the diverse elements of a text cohere into meaning,” deconstructionists try to show how the text “deconstructs,” “how i t can be broken down ... into mutually i rreconcilable positions.” Other goals of deconstructionists include (1) challenging the notion of authors’ “ownership” of texts

they create (and their ability to control the meaning of their texts)

and (2) focusing on how language is used to achieve power, as when they try to understand how a

some interpretations of a literary work come to be regarded as “truth.”

Linguistics is the scientific study of

human language.[1][2][3][4][5] Linguist

ics can be broadly broken into

three categories or subfields of

s tudy: language form, language

meaning, and language in context.

The earliest known activities

in descriptive linguisticshave been

attributed to Panini around 500

BCE, with his analysis

of Sanskrit inAshtadhyayi.[6]

The fi rst subfield of l inguistics is

the s tudy of language s tructure,

or grammar. This focuses on the

sys tem of rules followed by the

users of a language. It includes the

s tudy of morphology (the

formation and composition of

words), syntax (the formation and

composition of phrases and

sentences from these words),

and phonology (sound

systems). Phonetics is a related

branch of linguistics concerned

with the actual properties of

speech sounds and nonspeech

sounds, and how they are

produced and perceived.

The s tudy of language meaning is

concerned with how languages

employ logical s tructures and real-

world references to convey,

process, and assign meaning, as

wel l as to manage and

resolve ambiguity. This category

includes the s tudy

of semantics (how meaning is

inferred from words and concepts)

and pragmatics (how meaning i s

inferred from context).

Linguistics also looks at the

broader context in which language

is influenced by social, cultural,

his torical and political factors. This

includes the s tudy of evolutionary

l inguistics, which investigates into

questions related to the origins

and growth of

languages; historical l inguistics,

which explores language

change; sociolinguistics, which

looks at the relation between

l inguistic variation and social

s tructures; psycholinguistics,

which explores the representation

and function of language in the

mind; neurolinguistics, which

looks at language processing in

the bra in; language acquisition, on

how chi ldren or adults acquire

language; and discourse analysis,

which involves the s tructure of

texts and conversations.

Al though linguistics is the

scientific study of language, a

number of other intellectual

disciplines are relevant to

language and intersect with

i t. Semiotics, for example, i s the

general study of signs and symbols

both within language and

without. Li terary theoristsstudy

the use of language in l iterature.

Linguistics additionally draws on

and informs work from such

diverse fields

as acoustics, anthropology, biolog

y, computer science, human

anatomy, informatics, neuroscienc

e, phi losophy, psychology, sociolo

gy, and speech-language

pathology.

Phonetics (pronounced /fəˈnɛtɪks/

, from the Greek: φωνή, phōnē,

'sound, voice') is a branch

of l inguistics that comprises the

s tudy of the sounds of

human speech, or—in the case

of s ign languages—the equivalent

aspects of sign.[1]

It i s concerned

with the physical properties of

speech sounds or signs (phones):

their physiological production,

acoustic properties, auditory

perception, and

neurophysiological

s tatus. Phonology, on the other

hand, is concerned with the

abstract, grammatical

characterization of systems of

sounds or signs.

The field of phonetics is a multiple

layered subject of linguistics that

focuses on speech. In the case of

ora l languages there are three

bas ic areas of s tudy:

Articulatory phonetics: the s tudy

of the production of speech

sounds by the articulatory and

vocal tract by the speaker

Acoustic phonetics: the study of

the phys ical transmission of

speech sounds from the speaker

to the l istener

Auditory phonetics: the study of

the reception and perception of

speech sounds by the listener

These areas are inter-connected

through the common mechanism

of sound, such as wavelength

(pi tch), amplitude, and harmonics.

Phonology i s a branch

of l inguistics concerned with the

systematic organization

ofsounds in languages. It has

traditionally focused largely on

s tudy of

the systems ofphonemes in

particular languages, but it may

a lso cover any l inguistic

analysis either at a level beneath

the word (including syllable, onset

and rhyme, articulatory gestures,

articulatory features, mora, etc.)

or at a l l levels of language

where sound is considered to be

s tructured for conveying linguistic

meaning. Phonology a lso includes

the s tudy of equivalent

organizational systems in sign

languages.

The word phonology (as in the

phonology of English) can also

refer to the phonological system

(sound system) of a given

language. This is one of the

fundamental systems which a

language is considered to

comprise, like its syntax and

i ts vocabulary.

Phonology i s often distinguished

from phonetics. While phonetics

concerns the physical production,

acoustic transmission

and perception of the sounds of

speech,[1][2] phonology describes

the way sounds function within a

given language or across

languages to encode meaning. In

other words, phonetics belongs

to descriptive linguistics, and

phonology totheoretical

l inguistics. Note that this

dis tinction was not a lways made,

particularly before the

development of the modern

concept of phoneme in the mid

20th century. Some subfields of

modern phonology have a

crossover with phonetics in

descriptive disciplines such

as psycholinguistics and speech

perception, resulting in specific

areas l ikearticulatory

phonology or laboratory

phonology.

n l inguistics, morphology i s the

identification, analysis and

description of the s tructure of a

given language's morphemes and

other l inguistic units, such

as words, affixes, parts of

speech, intonation/stress, or

implied context (words in

a lexicon are the subject matter

oflexicology). Morphological

typology represents a method for

classifying languages according to

the ways by which morphemes are

used in a language —from

the analyticthat use only isolated

morphemes, through

the agglutinative ("stuck-

together") andfusional

languages that use bound

morphemes (affixes), up to

the polysynthetic, which compress

lots of separate morphemes into

s ingle words.

Whi le words are generally

accepted as being (with cl itics) the

smallest units of syntax, it i s clear

that in most languages, if not a ll,

words can be related to other

words by rules (grammars). For

example, English speakers

recognize that the

words dog and dogs are closely

related — differentiated only by

the plurality morpheme "-s",

which is only foundbound to

nouns, and is never separate.

Speakers of English (a fusional

language) recognize these

relations from their tacit

knowledge of the rules of word

formation in English. They infer

intuitively that dog is

to dogs as cat is to cats;

s imilarly, dog is to dog

catcher as dish is to dishwasher, in

one sense. The rules understood

by the speaker reflect specific

patterns, or regularities, in the

way words are formed from

smaller units and how those

smaller units interact in speech. In

this way, morphology is the

branch of linguistics that studies

patterns of word formation within

and across languages, and

attempts to formulate rules that

model the knowledge of the

speakers of those languages.

A language like Classical

Chinese instead uses unbound

("free") morphemes, but depends

on post-phrase affixes, and word

order to convey meaning.

However, this cannot be said of

present-day Mandarin, in which

most words are compounds

(around 80%), and most roots are

bound.

In the Chinese languages, these

are understood as grammars that

represent the morphology of the

language. Beyond the

agglutinative languages, a

polysynthetic language

l ike Chukchi will have words

composed of many morphemes:

The word

"təmeyŋəlevtpəγtərkən" is

composed of eight morphemes t-

ə-meyŋ-ə-levt-pəγt-ə-rkən, that

can be glossed 1.SG.SUBJ-great-

head-hurt-PRES.1, meaning 'I have

a fierce headache.' The

morphology of such languages

a l lows for each consonant and

vowel to be understood as

morphemes, just as the grammars

of the language key the usage and

understanding of each morpheme.

The discipline that deals

specifically with the sound

changes occurring within

morphemes is

ca l led morphophonology.

In l inguistics, syntax (from Ancient

Greek σύνταξις "arrangement"

from σύν syn, "together",

and τάξις táxis, "an ordering") is

"the s tudy of the principles and

processes by which sentences are

constructed in

particular languages".[1]

In addition to referring to the

overarching discipline, the

term syntax is also used to refer

di rectly to the rules and principles

that govern the sentence

s tructure of any individual

language, for example in

"the syntax of Modern Irish."

Modern research in syntax

attempts to describe languages in

terms of such rules. Many

professionals in this discipline

attempt to find general rules that

apply to a ll natural languages.

The term syntax is also used to

refer to the rules governing the

behavior of mathematical

systems, such as formal

languages used in logic.

Semantics (from Greek: sēmantiká

, neuter plural

of sēmantikós)[1][2] i s the study

ofmeaning. It focuses on the

relation between signifiers, such

as words, phrases, signs,

andsymbols, and what they stand

for, their denotata.

Linguistic semantics is the s tudy of

meaning that is used to

understand human expression

through language. Other forms of

semantics include the semantics

of programming languages, formal

logics, and semiotics.

The word semantics itself denotes

a range of ideas, from the popular

to the highly technical. It is often

used in ordinary language to

denote a problem of

understanding that comes down

to word selection or connotation.

This problem of understanding has

been the subject of many formal

inquiries, over a long period of

time, most notably in the field

offormal semantics. In linguistics,

i t i s the study of interpretation of

s igns or symbols as used

by agents or communities within

particular ci rcumstances and

contexts .[3]

Within this view,

sounds, facial expressions, body

language, and proxemics have

semantic (meaningful) content,

and each has several branches of

s tudy. In written language, such

things as paragraph structure and

punctuation have semantic

content; in other forms of

language, there is other semantic

content.[3]

The formal s tudy of semantics

intersects with many other fields

of inquiry,

includinglexicology, syntax, pragm

atics, etymology and others,

a l though semantics is a well-

defined field in i ts own right, often

with synthetic

properties.[4] In philosophy of

language, semantics

and reference are closely

connected. Further related fields

include philology,communication,

and semiotics. The formal study of

semantics is therefore complex.

Semantics contrasts with syntax,

the s tudy of the combinatorics of

units of a language (without

reference to their meaning),

and pragmatics, the study of the

relationships between the

symbols of a language, their

meaning, and the users of the

language.[5]

In international scientific

vocabulary semantics is also

ca l led semasiology.

Discourse analysis (DA),

or discourse studies, is a general

term for a number of approaches

to analyzing written, vocal, or s ign

language use or any

s ignificant semioticevent.

The objects of discourse analysis

—

discourse, writing, conversation,

communicativeevent, etc. — are

variously defined in terms of

coherent sequences

of sentences,propositions, speech

acts , or turns-at-talk. Contrary to

much of traditional linguistics,

discourse analysts not only s tudy

language use 'beyond the

sentence boundary', but also

prefer to analyze 'naturally

occurring' language use, and not

invented examples. Text

l inguistics is related. The essential

di fference between discourse

analysis and text linguistics is that

i t a ims at revealing socio-

psychological characteristics of a

person/persons rather than text

s tructure.[1]

Discourse analysis has been taken

up in a variety of social

science disciplines,

includinglinguistics, sociology, ant

hropology, social work, cognitive

psychology, social

psychology,international

relations, human

geography, communication

s tudies, and translation s tudies,

each of which is subject to its own

assumptions, dimensions of

analysis, and methodologies.

Styl i stics is the study and

interpretation of texts from a

l inguistic perspective. As a

discipline it links literary

cri ticism and linguistics, but has no

autonomous domain of i ts

own.[1][2] The preferred object of

s tyl istic s tudies is literature, but

not exclusively "high literature"

but a lso other forms of wri tten

texts such as text from the

domains ofadvertising, pop

cul ture, politics or religion.[3]

Styl i stics also attempts to

establish principles capable of

explaining the particular choices

made by individuals and social

groups in their use of language,

such as socialisation, the

production and reception

of meaning, cri tical discourse

analysis and literary cri ticism.

Other features of s tylistics include

the use of dialogue, including

regional accents and

people’s dialects, descriptive

language, the use of grammar,

such as the active voice orpassive

voice, the distribution

of sentence lengths, the use of

particular language registers, etc.

In addition, stylistics is a

dis tinctive term that may be used

to determine the connections

between the form and effects

within a particular variety of

language. Therefore, s tylistics

looks at what i s ‘going on’ within

the language; what the linguistic

associations are that the style of

language reveals. Poetry

As well as conventional styles of

language there are the

unconventional – the most

obvious of which is poetry.

In Practical Stylistics,HG

Widdowson examines the

traditional form of the epitaph, as

found on headstones in a

cemetery. For example:

His memory i s dear today

As in the hour he passed away.

(Ernest C. Draper ‘Ern’. Died

4.1.38)

(Widdowson. 1992, 6)

Widdowson makes the point that

such sentiments are usually not

very interesting and suggests that

they may even be dismissed as

‘crude verbal carvings’ and crude

verbal disturbance (Widdowson,

3). Nevertheless, Widdowson

recognises that they are a very

rea l attempt to convey feelings of

human loss and preserve

affectionate recollections of a

beloved friend or family me mber.

However, what may be seen as

poetic in this language is not so

much in the

formulaic phraseology but in

where it appears. The verse may

be given undue reverence

precisely because of the sombre

s i tuation in which i t is placed.

Widdowson suggests that, unlike

words set in s tone in a graveyard,

poetry i s unorthodox language

that vibrates with inter-textual

implications. (Widdowson. 1992,

4)

Two problems with a s tylistic

analysis of poetry are noted by PM

Wetherill in Li terary Text: An

Examination of Cri tical Methods.

The fi rst is that there may be an

over-preoccupation with one

particular feature that may well

minimise the s ignificance of others

that are equally important.

(Wetherill. 1974, 133) The second

is that any attempt to see a text as

s imply a collection of stylistic

elements will tend to ignore other

ways whereby meaning is

produced. (Wetherill. 1974, 133)

[edit]Implicature

In ‘Poetic Effects’ from Literary

Pragmatics, the linguist Adrian

Pi lkington analyses the idea of

‘implicature’, as instigated in the

previous work of Dan

Sperber and Deirdre Wilson.

Implicature may be divided into

two categories: ‘s trong’ and

‘weak’ implicature, yet between

the two extremes there are a

variety of other alternatives. The

s trongest implicature is what is

emphatically implied by the

speaker or wri ter, while weaker

implicatures are the wider

possibilities of meaning that the

hearer or reader may conclude.

Pi lkington’s ‘poetic effects’, as he

terms the concept, are those that

achieve most relevance through a

wide array of weak implicatures

and not those meanings that are

s imply ‘read in’ by the hearer or

reader. Yet the distinguishing

instant at which weak implicatures

and the hearer or reader’s

conjecture of meaning diverge

remains highly subjective. As

Pi lkington says: ‘there is no clear

cut-off point between

assumptions which the speaker

certa inly endorses and

assumptions derived purely on the

hearer’s responsibility.’

(Pi lkington. 1991, 53) In addition,

the s tyl istic qualities of poetry can

be seen as an accompaniment to

Pi lkington’s poetic effects in

understanding a poem's meaning. [edit]Tense

Widdowson points out that

in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem

"The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"

(1798), the mystery of the

Mariner’s abrupt appearance is

sustained by an idiosyncratic use

of tense. (Widdowson. 1992, 40)

For instance, the Mariner ‘holds’

the wedding-guest with his ‘skinny

hand’ in the present tense, but

releases it in the past tense ('...his

hands dropt he.'); only to hold him

again, this time with his ‘glittering

eye’, in the present. (Widdowson.

1992, 41)

Widdowson notices that when the

content of poetry i s summarised,

i t often refers to very general and

unimpressive observations, such

as ‘nature is beautiful; love is

great; l ife is lonely; time passes’,

and so on. (Widdowson. 1992, 9)

But to say:

Like as the waves make towards

the pebbled shore,

So do our minutes hasten to their

end ...

Wi l liam Shakespeare, ‘60’.

Or, indeed:

Love, a l l alike, no season knows

nor cl ime,

Nor hours , days months, which are

the rags of time ...

John Donne, ‘The Sun

Ris ing’, Poems (1633)

This language gives us[who?] a new

perspective on familiar themes

and a llows us to look at them

without the personal or social

conditioning that we

unconsciously associate with

them. (Widdowson. 1992, 9) So,

a l though we [who?] may still use the

same exhausted words and vague

terms l ike ‘love’, ‘heart’ and ‘soul’

to refer to human experience, to

place these words in a new and

refreshing context a llows the poet

the ability to represent humanity

and communicate honestly. This,

in part, is s tylistics, and this,

according to Widdowson, is the

point of poetry (Widdowson.

1992, 76).

One of the main goals of language teachers is to provide s tudents with the tools to be effective communicators

in the TL. Often when s tudents are assigned projects and assignments (like the weather report in Anna’s case

study) their lack of practical tools to produce the actual language becomes evident. In these cases, s tudents

might very well have the necessary resources to accomplish the task, but teachers might need to consider a

communicative approach to teaching the language, focusing on the functions of language, to properly equip

s tudents to complete assigned tasks. In this section we will explore functions of language and how they can be

taught in the SL classroom.

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Anna's case s tudy

What i s communicative language teaching?

The concept of communicative language teaching has grown out of the notion that solely teaching

grammar is not enough to prepare s tudents for using the language independently. This method of teaching proposes that s tudents

need to understand the meaning and the communicative function of

a language in order to learn the language.

David Wilkins, a theorist closely l inked with communicative language teaching, suggests that language teaching should be organized into notional (relating to meaning) and functional (relating to communication) syllabi. He suggests that the concept of communicative functions (to which

he credits Holladay) may be the most important aspect of this

framework. Other contributors to this theory, such as Jan van Ek, bui ld on Wilkins’ terms a nd ideas,

but interpret them somewhat di fferently. In place ofcommunicative function, they substitute language function, referring to what people do through language. To learn more about communicative language teaching and its history cl ick here.

What are language functions?

A lot of what we say i s for a specific purpose. Whether we are

apologizing, expressing a wish or asking permission, we use language in order to fulfill that purpose. Each purpose can be known as

a language function. Savignon describes a language function as “the use to which language is put,

the purpose of an utterance rather than the particular grammatical

form an utterance takes” (Savignon, 1983). By us ing this idea to s tructure teaching, the instructional

focus becomes less about form and more about the meaning of an

utterance. In this way, s tudents use the language in order to fulfill a specific purpose, therefore making their speech more meaningful.

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What are some examples of functions of language?

If we think about a

function of language as one that serves a purpose we can see that much of what we see can

be considered to be functional. Let's take the example of going to a

dinner party. Arriving at the dinner party we may

introduce ourselves, thank the host and ask where to put our coats.

During the dinner we may congratulate someone on a recent accomplishment, ask advice, express affection and compliment the host on the meal. Each of these individual utterance are considered

functions of language.

How can we teach functions of language?

Krashen and Terrell (1983) suggest that basic communication goals can be expressed in terms of situations,

functions and topics. It is up to the teacher to plan the situations within which s tudents will be able

to use their language for a purpose in the classroom context. For

instance if the topic being learned is family and relatives then the s i tuation may be introductions or vis i ting relatives. By creating a s i tuation the teacher is providing

the necessary context students need to use the language for a function.

In addition to creating situations, teachers must a lso be prepared to

explain that there may be a large

number of possible ways to fulfill each function of language. For

instance greeting an elderly lady on the s treet would differ from

greeting a peer in their home. Choos ing the appropriate way in which to say something will partly depend on:

1. your social standing relative to

the person you are talking to; 2. how well you know the person; 3. who is listening; and 4. the ci rcumstances under which the communication occurs.

What is Linguistics?

Origins

Linguistics is the systematic and

scientific study of human language. Its origins go back to the s tudy of classical authors and languages in the Renaissance and into the early

19th century. The Rosetta Stone, discovered at the end of the 18th century, contained an ancient bi l ingual text which provided the key to understanding Egyptian

hieroglyphics and generated a good deal of interest in ancient

languages. European scholars in particular were influential in the

early s tudy of languages. The Grimm Brothers in Germany were interested not only in origins of fa i ry ta les but also of languages.

German l inguists in the 19th century led the way in the s tudy of

languages such as Sanskrit.

Branches of Linguistics

Today, historical and comparative l inguistics, such as that done in the 19th century, continues, focusing on how languages have developed and how they di ffer, but there is

more interest today in descriptive l inguistics, This is the s tudy of how language is s tructured and how i t is

used by contemporary speakers of the language. Particular influential

in the direction of linguistics study today are Ferdinand de Saussure, the father of structural linguistics and Noam Chomsky, the originator of transformational grammar. Speci fic areas of study in linguistics today include phonetics, morphology, syntax, and semantics.

Exercises

Have you read the intro?

Phonetics

The Sounds of language

Phonetics is the study of the sounds of a language. In English, and in

many other languages, how words are spelled does not necessarily

correspond to how they are pronounced. Some languages are

much closer in pronunciation to the

way they are spelled. English i s notorious for i ts erratic spelling in

relation to pronunciation.

An important aspect of the study of phonetics is learning the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), whose symbols are used to

describe specific sounds. The IPA is independent of any specific

language, all world languages can be transcribed using its symbols, which include sounds such as the

cl icks used in some African languages. The word "fish" is

rendered in IPA as / fɪʃ /. Note that

the IPA symbols are placed between slashes.

Here are some of the IPA symbols for Engl ish vowels:

ɑ father ʌ run,

enough

ɪ s i t ɑ not,

wasp

i see ʊ put,

wood

ɛ bed u soon,

through

æ

lad,

cat,

ran

ə about

Morphology

Word formation

The concept of morphology i s not unique to linguistics. In fact, it was fi rs t used by the German writer Goethe in the early 19th century in relation to plants, as a way to describe the different varieties of plants that have arisen from common ancestors. In addition to

biology, morphology i s also used in

fields as diverse as astronomy and folklore s tudies.

In l inguistics morphology i s the

s tudy of how the forms of words change when used in actual speech,

including endings and transformations which indicate how words grammatical function. In the sentence "he sees the children", the "s" i s added to the verb see when i t is used in the 3rd person s ingular and "children" i s the plural transformation of "child".

Some languages have extensive sets of changes to words such as nouns and adjectives. French and

Spanish, for example, change forms of adjective endings for masculine

versus feminine nouns. German and Russian have much for extensive endings, that correspond

to changes in grammatical case, i .e. di fferent endings for nominative (subject case), accusative (direct objects) and for dative (indirect

objects). On the other hand, some languages, such as Chinese, undergo very l ittle in the way of word transformations. Plural forms in Chinese, for example, are

identical to singular forms.

Syntax

How sentences are put together

Syntax involves the way that words are put together to construct

sentences. In English normal word order i s subject - verb - object as in "We saw him". Word order varies in di fferent languages. In English word order i s important in determining

grammatical function, for example,

whether a noun is a subject or di rect object. This is because Engl ish i s not a heavily inflected

language, that is i t does not have a rich set of endings. In contrast, in

languages like German or Russian, word order is often not as important as case endings in determining grammatical function.

Syntax i s a lso concerned with

sentence connectors such as conjunctions. In English, clauses are often combined with coordinating conjunctions ("and", "but"), subordinating conjunctions ("because", "although"), or adverbs ("however", "nevertheless"). Longer sentences with more than one clause are compound sentences, while short utterances without a verb are called ellipses

Semantics

The meaning of words

In l inguistics semantics i s the study of the meaning of words. Linguists dis tinguish between "signifiers" --

the words used to identify things or ideas -- and "signified" -- the actual i tems referred to. This distinction was first made by Ferdinand de Saussure in his lectures on

l inguistics - this has become not only a major area of modern l inguistics, bust has a lso spawed the

field of semiotics - the s tudy of s igns (not just words) and their

s ignificance. Semantics is a crucial element in the philosophy of language. In international scientific vocabulary semantics is also ca lled semasiology.

One of areas of interest in

semantics is the relationship among words , including synonyms -- same

or s imilar meaning --, antonyms -- opposites --, and homonymes -- words that sound the same but

have different meanings.

Shannon's Model of the Communication Process

Shannon's (1948) model of the communication process is, in important ways, the beginning of the modern field. It provided, for

the fi rst time, a general model of the communication process that

could be treated as the common ground of such diverse disciplines as journalism, rhetoric, linguistics,

and speech and hearing sciences. Part of i ts success is due to its

s tructuralist reduction of communication to a set of basic constituents that not only explain

how communication happens, but why communication sometimes fa i ls. Good timing played a role as wel l. The world was barely thirty

years into the age of mass radio, had arguably fought a world war in i ts wake, and an even more

powerful, television, was about to assert i tself. It was time to create

the field of communication as a uni fied discipline, and Shannon's model was as good an excuse as any. The model's enduring va lue is readily evident in introductory textbooks. It remains one of the fi rs t things most s tudents learn about communication when they take an introductory communication class. Indeed, it is one of only a handful of theoretical s tatements about the

communication process that can be found in introductory textbooks in

both mass communication and interpersonal communication.

Figure 1: Shannon's (1948) Model

of the communication process .

Shannon's model, as shown in Figure 1, breaks the process of

communication down into eight discrete components:

1. An information source. Presumably a person who

creates a message.

2. The message, which is both sent by the information source and received by the

destination. 3. A transmitter. For

Shannon's immediate purpose a telephone instrument that captures

an audio signal, converts i t into an electronic

s ignal, and amplifies it for transmission through the telephone network.

Transmission is readily generalized within Shannon's information theory to encompass a

wide range of transmitters. The simplest transmission system, that

associated with face-to-face communication, has

at least two layers of transmission. The first, the mouth (sound) and body (gesture), create and modulate a signal. The second layer, which might a lso be described as a channel, is built of the a i r (sound) and light (gesture) that enable the transmission of those s ignals from one person

to another. A television broadcast would

obviously include many more layers, with the addition of cameras and

microphones, editing and fi l tering systems, a national signal dis tribution network (often satellite), and a loca l radio wave broadcast antenna.

4. The signal, which flows through a channel. There

may be multiple parallel s ignals, as is the case in face-to-face interaction

where sound and gesture involve different signal

systems that depend on di fferent channels and modes of transmission.

There may be multiple

serial signals, with sound and/or gesture turned into electronic signals, radio waves, or words

and pictures in a book. 5. A carrier or channel,

which is represented by the small unlabeled box in the middle of the model.

The most commonly used channels include a ir, light,

electricity, radio waves, paper, and postal systems. Note that there

may be multiple channels associated with the multiple layers of transmission, as

described above. 6. Noise, in the form of

secondary s ignals that

obscure or confuse the s ignal carried. Given

Shannon's focus on telephone transmission, carriers, and reception, it should not be surprising that noise is restricted to noise that obscures or obl iterates some portion of the s ignal within the channel. This is a fairly restrictive notion of noise, by current s tandards, and a

somewhat misleading one. Today we have at

least some media which are so noise free that compressed signals are

constructed with an absolutely minimal amount information and l i ttle l ikelihood of s ignal loss. In the process, Shannon's solution to noise, redundancy, has been largely replaced by a minimally redundant

solution: error detection and correction. Today we use noise more as a

metaphor for problems associated with effective

l i stening. 7. A receiver. In Shannon's

conception, the receiving

telephone instrument. In

face to face communication a set of ears (sound) and eyes (gesture). In television,

several layers of receiver, including an antenna and

a television set. 8. A destination.

Presumably a person who

consumes and processes the message.

Like all models, this is a minimalist abstraction of the reality i t attempts to reproduce. The reality of most communication systems is more complex. Most information sources (and destinations) act as

both sources and destinations. Transmitters, receivers, channels,

s ignals, and even messages are often layered both serially and in para llel such that there are multiple

s ignals transmitted and received, even when they are converged into a common signal s tream and a common channel. Many other elaborations can be readily described.. It remains, however, that Shannon's model is a useful abstraction that identifies the most important components of

communication and their general relationship to one another. That va lue is evident in its similarity to

rea l world pictures of the designs of new communication systems,

including Bell's original sketches of the telephone, as seen in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Bel l 's drawing of the

workings of a telephone, from his origina l sketches (source: Bel l

Family Papers; Library of Congress ; http://memory.loc.gov/mss/mcc/0

04/0001.jpg)

Bel l's sketch visibly contains an information source and destination, transmitters and receivers, a channel, a signal, and an implied message (the information source is

ta lking). What is new, in Shannon's model (aside from the concept of noise, which is only partially

reproduced by Bell's batteries), is a formal vocabulary that is now

generally used in describing such des igns, a vocabulary that sets up both Shannon's mathematical theory of information and a large

amount of subsequent communication theory. This

correspondence between Bell's sketch and Shannon's model is rarely remarked (see Hopper, 1992

for one instance).

Shannon's model isn't really a model of communication, however. It i s , instead, a model of the flow of information through a medium, and an incomplete and biased model that i s far more applicable to the system i t maps, a telephone or

telegraph, than it i s to most other media. It suggests, for instance, a

"push" model in which sources of information can inflict it on destinations. In the real world of

media, destinations are more typica lly self-selecting "consumers" of information who have the ability to select the messages they are most interested in, turn off messages that don't interest them, focus on one message in preference to other in message rich environments, and can choose to

s imply not pay attention. Shannon's model depicts transmission from a transmitter to a receiver as the

primary activity of a medium. In the rea l world of media, messages are

frequently s tored for elongated periods of time and/or modified in some way before they are accessed

by the "destination". The model suggests that communication within a medium i s frequently di rect and unidirectional, but in the

rea l world of media, communication is a lmost never unidirectional and is often indirect.

Derivative Models of the

Communication Process

One of these shortcomings is addressed in Figure 2's intermediary model of communication (sometimes referred to as the gatekeeper model or two-step flow (Katz, 1957)). This model, which i s

frequently depicted in introductory texts in mass communication, focuses on the important role that intermediaries often play in the

communication process. Mass communication texts frequently

specifically associate editors, who decide what stories will fit in a newspaper or news broadcast, with

this intermediary or gatekeeper role. There are, however, many

intermediary roles (Foulger, 2002a) associated with communication. Many of these intermediaries have

the ability to decide what messages others see, the context in which they are seen, and when they see them. They often have the ability,

moreover, to change messages or to prevent them from reaching an audience (destination). In extreme

variations we refer to such gatekeepers as censors. Under the

more normal conditions of mass media, in which publications choose some content in preference to other potential content based on an editorial policy, we refer to them as editors (most mass media), moderators (Internet discussion groups), reviewers (peer-reviewed publications), or aggregators (cl ipping services), among other ti tles . Delivery workers (a postal del ivery worker, for instance) a lso

act as intermediaries, and have the abi lity to act as gatekeepers, but

are generally restricted from doing so as a matter of ethics and/or law.

Figure 3: An Intermediary Model .

Variations of Figure 3's gatekeeper model are also used in teaching organizational communication, where gatekeepers, in the form of bridges and liaisons, have some abi lity to shape the organization

through their selective sharing of

information. These variations are generally more complex in depiction and often take the form

of social network diagrams that

depict the interaction relationships of dozens of people. They network diagrams often presume, or at least a l low, bi-directional arrows such that they are more consistent with

the notion that communication is most often bidirectional.

The bidirectionality of communication is commonly addressed in interpersonal communication text with two elaborations of Shannon's model (which is often labeled as the action

model of communication): the interactive model and the transactive model. The interactive

model, a variant of which is shown in Figure 4, elaborates Shannon's

model with the cybernetic concept of feedback (Weiner, 1948, 1986), often (as is the case in Figure 4) without changing any other element of Shannon's model. The

key concept associated with this elaboration is that destinations provide feedback on the messages they receive such that the information sources can adapt their messages, in real time. This is an important elaboration, and as

generally depicted, a radically overs implified one. Feedback is a

message (or a set of messages). The source of feedback is an information source. The consumer

of feedback is a destination. Feedback i s transmitted, received, and potentially disruptable via noise sources. None of this is visible in the typical depiction of the

interactive model. This doesn't diminish the importance of feedback or the usefulness of elaborating Shannon's model to

include i t. People really do adapt their messages based on the

feedback they receive. It is useful,

however, to notice that the interactive model depicts feedback

at a much higher level of abstraction than i t does messages.

Figure 4: An Interactive

Model :

This difference in the level of abstraction is addressed in the transactional model of communication, a variant of which

i s shown in Figure 5. This model acknowledges neither creators nor consumers of messages, preferring

to label the people associated with the model as communicators who

both create and consume messages. The model presumes additional symmetries as well, with

each participant creating messages that are received by the other

communicator. This is, in many ways , an excellent model of the face-to-face interactive process which extends readily to any interactive medium that provides users with symmetrical interfaces for creation and consumption of

messages, including notes, letters, C.B. Radio, electronic mail, and the

radio. It is, however, a distinctly interpersonal model that implies an equality between communicators

that often doesn't exist, even in interpersonal contexts. The caller in

most telephone conversations has the initial upper hand in setting the direction and tone of a a telephone

ca l lr than the receiver of the call (Hopper, 1992).In face-to-face head-complement interactions, the boss (head) has considerably more

freedom (in terms of message choice, media choice, ability to frame meaning, ability to set the

rules of interaction) and power to a l locate message bandwidth than

does the employee (complement). The model certainly does not apply in mass media contexts.

Figure 5: A Transactional Model :

The "masspersonal" (xxxxx, 199x) media of the Internet through this implied symmetry into even greater

rel ief. Most Internet media grant everyone symmetrical creation and

consumption interfaces. Anyone with Internet access can create a web s ite and participate as an equal partner in e-mail, instant messaging, chat rooms, computer conferences, collaborative composition sites, blogs, interactive games, MUDs, MOOs, and other media. It remains, however, that users have very di fferent preferences in their message consumption and creation. Some

people are very comfortable creating messages for others

onl ine. Others prefer to "lurk"; to freely browse the messages of others without adding anything of

their own. Adding comments to a computer conference is rarely more di fficult than sending an e-mail, but most Internet discussion groups have many more lurkers (consumers of messages that never post) than they have contributors

(people who both create and consume messages). Oddly, the

lurkers sometimes feel more integrated with the community than the contributors do (Baym,

2000).

A New Model of the Communication Process

Exis ting models of the

communication process don't provide a reasonable basis for understanding such effects. Indeed,

there are many things that we routinely teach undergraduates in

introductory communication courses that are missing from, or outright inconsistent with, these models. Consider that:

we now routinely teach

s tudents that "receivers" of messages really "consume" messages. People usually have a rich menu of potential

messages to choose from and they select the messages they want to hear in much the same

way that diners select entrees from a restaurant menu. We teach s tudents

that most "noise" is generated within the

l i stener, that we engage messages through "selective attention", that

one of the most important things we can do to improve our communication is to learn

how to l isten, that mass media audiences have choices, and that we need to be "l iterate" in our media choices, even in

(and perhaps especially in) our choice of television messages. Yet

a l l of these models suggest an "injection

model" in which message reception is automatic.

we spend a large portion of our introductory courses teaching students about language, including wri tten, verbal, and non-

verbal languages, yet language is a ll but ignored

in these models (the use of the term in Figure 5 i s not the usual practice in

depictions of the transactive model).

we spend large portions of our introductory courses teaching students about the importance of perception, attribution, and relationships to our interpretation of

messages; of the importance of communication to the perceptions that others

have of us, the perceptions we have of

ourselves, and the creation and maintenence of the

relationships we have with others. These

models say nothing about the role of perception and relationshp to the way we

interpret messages or our wi l lingness to consume messages from different people.

we spend large portions of our introductory courses teaching students

about the socially constructed aspects of

languages, messages, and media use. Intercultural communication presumes both social construction and the presumption that

people schooled in one set of conventions will a lmost certainly violate the expectations of

people schooled in a di fferent set of expectations. Discussions

of the effects of media on cul ture presume that

communication within the same medium may be very di fferent in different

cul tures, but that the effects of the medium on various cultures will be more uniform. Existing

general models provide l i ttle in the way of a platform from which these effects can be discussed.

when we use these models in teaching

courses in both interpersonal and mass communication; in

teaching students about very di fferent kinds of media. With the exception of the Shannon

model, we tend to use these models selectively in describing those media, and without any s trong

indication of where the medium begins or ends;

without any indication of how media interrelate with languages,

messages, or the people who create and consume

messages.without addressing the ways in which they are . while

these media describe, in a generalized way, media,

The ecological model of

communication, shown in Figure 6, attempts to provide a platform on

which these issues can be explored. It asserts that communication occurs in the intersection of four

fundamental constructs: communication between people (creators and consumers) i s mediated by messages which are created using language within media; consumed from media and interpreted using language.This model is, in many ways, a more deta iled elaboration of Lasswell's

(1948) classic outline of the study of communication: "Who ... says what ... in which channel ... to

whom ... with what effect". In the ecological model , the "who" are

the creators of messages, the "says what" are the messages, the "in which channel" is elaborated into

languages (which are the content of channels) and media (which channels are a component of), the "to whom" are the consumers of

messages, and the effects are found in various relationships between the primitives, including relationships, perspectives, attributions, interpretations, and

the continuing evolution of languages and media.

Figure 6: A Ecological Model of

the Communication Process

A number of relationships are described in this model:

1. Messages are created and consumed using language

2. Language occurs within the context of media

3. Messages are constructed and consumed within the

context of media 4. The roles of consumer

and creator are reflexive.

People become creators when they reply or supply

feedback to other people. Creators become consumers when they

make use of feedback to adapt their messages to message consumers. People learn how to

create messages through the act of consuming other peoples messages.

5. The roles of consumer and creator are

introspective. Creators of messages create

messages within the context of their perspectives of and

relationships with anticipated consumers of messages. Creators optimize their messages to their target audiences. Consumers of messages interpret those messages

within the context of their perspectives of, and

relationships with, creators of messages. Consumers make

attributions of meaning based on their opinion of the message creator. People form these perspectives and

relationships as a function

of their communication. 6. The messages creators of

messages construct are

necessarily imperfect representations of the

meaning they imagine. Messages are created within the expressive l imitations of the medium

selected and the meaning representation space

provided by the language used. The message created is a lmost always a

partial and imperfect representation of what

the creator would like to say.

7. A consumers

interpretation of a messages necessarily attributes meaning imperfectly. Consumers

intepret messages within the l imits of the languages used and the

media those languages are used in. A consumers

interpretation of a message may be very di fferent than what the creator of a message imagined.

8. People learn language by through the experience of encountering language being used within media. The languages they learn wi l l almost always be the languages when

communicating with people who already know

and use those languages. That communication a lways occurs within a

medium that enables those languages.

9. People learn media by us ing media. The media they learn will necessarilly be the media used by the people they communicate with.

10. People invent and evolve

languages. While some behavior expressions (a baby's cry) occur naturally

and some aspects of language s tructure may

mirror the ways in which the bra in s tructures ideas, language does not occur

naturally. People invent

new language when there i s no language that they can be socialized into. People evolve language

when they need to communicate ideas that

exis ting language is not sufficient to.

11. People invent and evolve

media While some of the modalities and channels

associated with communication are naturally occurring, the

media we use to communicate are not.

A medium of communication is, in

short, the product of a set of complex interactions between its

primary consituents: messages, people (acting as creators of messages, consumers of messages,

and in other roles), languages, and media. Three of these consituents are themselves complex systems and the subject of entire fields of s tudy, including psychology, sociology, anthropology (a ll three of which study people), linguistics (language), media ecology (media), and communication (messages,

language, and media). Even messages can be regarded as complex entities, but its

complexities can be described enti rely within the scope of

languages, media, and the people who use them. This ecological model of communication is, in its

most fundamental reading, a compact theory of messages and the systems that enable them. Messages are the central feature of

the model and the most fundamental product of the interaction of people, language, and media. But there are other products of the model that build up

from that base of messages, including (in a rough ordering to

increased complexity) observation, learning, interpretation, socialization, attribution,

perspectives, and relationships.

Discussion: Positioning the study of media in the field of communication

It i s in this layering of interdependent social construction

that this model picks up its name. Our communication is not produced within any s ingle system, but in the intersection of several interrelated systems, each of which i s self-standing necessarily described by dedicated theories, but each of which is both the product of the others and, in i ts own l imited way, an instance of the other. The medium is, as McLuhan famously observed, a message that

i s inherent to every message that is created in or consumed from a

medium. The medium is, to the extent that we can select among media, a lso a language such that

the message of the medium is not only inherent to a message, but often an element of i ts composition. In what may be the most extreme view enabled by the processing of messages within media, the medium may also be a person and consumes messages, recreates them, and makes the

modified messages available for further consumption. A medium is rea lly none of these things. It is

fundamentally a system that enables the construction of

messages using a set of languages such that they can be consumed. But a medium is also both all of

these things and the product of their interaction. People learn, create, and evolve media as a vehicle for enabling the creation

and consumption of messages.

The same might be said of each of the constituents of this model. People can be, and often are, the

medium (insofar as they act as messengers), the language (insofar

as different people can be selected as messengers), or the message (one's choice of messenger can be

profoundly meaningful). Fundamentally a person is none of these things, but they can be used as any of these things and are the

product of their experience of a ll of these things. Our experience of messages, languages, media, and through them, other people, is

fundamental in shaping who we become and how we think of

ourselves and others. We invent ourselves, and others work di l igently to shape that invention,

through our consumption of messages, the languages we

master, and the media we use.

Language can be, and often are, the message (that is inherent to every message constructed with it), the medium (but only trivially), the person (both at the level of the

"language instinct" that is inherent to people (following Pinker, xxxxx)

and a socialized semiotic overlay on personal experience), and even "the language" (insofar as we have

a choice of what language we use in constructing a given message). Fundamentally a language is none of these things, but i t can be used as any of these things and is the product of our use of media to construct messages. We use language, within media, to construct messages, such as

definitions and dictionaries) that construct language. We invent and evolve language as a product of our

communication.

As for messages, they reiterate a ll of these constituents. Every message is a partial and incomplete precis of the language that i t is constructed with, the medium it i s created in and consumed from, and the person who created it. Every

message we consume allows us to learn a l ittle more about the

language that we interpret with, the medium we create and consume messages in, and the

person who created the message. Every message we create is an

opportunity to change and extend the language we use, evolve the media we use, and influence the

perspective that consumers of our messages have of us. Yet fundamentally, a message is simply a message, an attempt to

communicate something we imagine such that another person can correctly intepret the message and thus imagine the same thing.

This welter of intersecting

McLuhanesque/Burkean metaphors and interdependencies provides a second source of the models name. This model seeks, more than anything, to position language and media as the intermediate building blocks on which communication is bui lt. The position of language as a bui lding block of messages and and communication is well understood. Over a century of s tudy in semantics, semiotics, and linguistics

have produced systematic theories of message and language

production which are well understood and generally accepted. The s tudy of language is routinely

incorporated into vi rtually a ll programs in the field of communication, including journalism, rhetoric and speech, fi lm, theater, broadcast media, language arts, speech and hearing sciences telecommunications, and other variants, including departments of "language and

social interaction". The positioning of the s tudy of media within the field of communication is

cons iderably more tenuous. Many departments, including most of

those named in this paragraph, focus almost entirely on only one or two media, effectively assuming the

medium such that the focus of s tudy can be constrained to the art of message production and interpretation, with a heavy focus

on the languages of the medium and l ittle real introspection about what i t means to use that medium in preference to another or the generalized ways in which all media

are invented, learned, evolved, socialized, selected or used

meaningfully.

Such is, however, the primary

subject matter of the newly emerging discipline of media ecology, and this model can be seen as an attempt to position

media ecology relative to language and messages as a building block of our communication. This model was created specifically to support

theories of media and position them relative to the process of

communication. It is hoped that the reader finds value in that pos itioning.

Conclusion: Theoretical and Pedogogical Value

Models are a fundamental building block of theory. They are also a

fundamental tool of instruction. Shannon's information theory model, Weiner's Cybernetic model,

and Katz' two s tep flow each a l lowed a llowed scholars

decompose the process of communication into discrete s tructural elements. Each provides

the basis for considerable bodies of communication theory and research. Each model also provides teachers with a powerful

pedagogical tool for teaching s tudents to understand that communication is a complex process in which many things can, and frequently do, go wrong; for

teaching students the ways in which they can perfect different

ski lls at different points in the communication process to become more effective communicators. But

whi le Shannon's model has proved effective across the primary divides in the field of communication, the other models Katz' and Weiner's models have not. Indeed, they in many ways exemplify that divide and the differences in what is

taught in courses oriented to interpersonal communication and

mass communication.

Weiner's cybernetic model

accentuates the interactive s tructure of communication. Katz'

model accentuates its production s tructure. Students of interpersonal communication are taught, through the use of the interactive/cybernetic and transactive models that attending to the feedback of their audience is

an important part of being an effective communicator. Students of mass communication are taught, through the

intermediary/gatekeeper/two-step flow model, that controlled

production processes are an important part of being an effective communicator. The difference is a

small one and there is no denying that both attention to feedback and

attention to detail are cri tical skills of effective communicators, but mass media programs focus heavily

on the minutiae of production, interpersonal programs focus heavily on the munitiae of attention to feedback. Despite the fact that

both teach both message production the languages used in message production, and the

deta ils of the small range of media that each typically covers, they

discuss different media, to some extent different languages, and di fferent approaches to message production. These differences, far more than more obvious di fferences like audience s ize or technology, are the divides that seperate the study of interpersonal communication from mass communication.

The ecological model of

communication presented here cannot, by i tself, remediate such

di fferences, but it does reconsitute and extend these models in ways that make it useful, both

pedogogically and theoretically, across the normal disciplinary boundaries of the field of communication. The author has

made good use of the model in teaching a variety of courses within several communication disciplines, including on interpersonal communication, mass media

cri ticism, organizational communication, communication

ethics, communication in relationships and communities, and new communication technologies.

In introductory Interpersonal Communication classes the model has shown considerable value in outl ining and tying together such

diverse topics as the social construction of the self, verbal and non-verbal languages, listening, relationship formation and

development, miscommunication, perception, attribution, and the

ways in which communication changes in different interpersonal media. In an Organizational

Communication class the model has proved va lue in tying

comtemporary Organizational models, including network analysis models, satisficing, and Weick's

model to key organizational skills l ike effective presentation, l i stening, and matching the medium to the goal and the stakeholder. In

a communication ethics class it has proved va luable in elaborating the range of participants in media who

have ethical responsibilities and the scope of their responsibilities. In a

mass media cri ticism class i t has proved useful in showing how di fferent cri tical methods relate to the process of communication and to each other. In each course the model has proved valuable, not only in giving students tools with which they can decompose communication, but which they can organize the course materials into a cohesive whole.

Whi le the model was originally composed for pedagogical

purposes, the primary va lue for the author has been theoretical. The field of communication

encompasses a wide range of very di fferent and often unintegrated theories and methods. Context-based gaps in the field like the one

between mass media and interpersonal communication have been equated to those of "two sovereign nations," with "different purposes, different boundaries",

"di fferent methods", and "different theoretical orientations" (Berger

and Chaffee, 1988), causing at least some to doubt that the field can ever be united by a common theory

of communication (Craig, 1999). xxxxx The author repeatedly finds these gaps and boundaries problematic

It may be be that complex model of the communication process that bridges the theoretical orientations of interpersonal, organizational,

and mass media perspectives can help to bridge this gap and provide

something more than the kind of metamodel that Cra ig calls for. Defining media directly into the

process of communication may help to provide the kind of

substrate that would satisfy Cappella's (1991) suggestion we can "remake the field by a ltering the

organizational format", replacing contexts with processes that operate within the scope of media. This perspective does exactly that.

The result does not integrate all of communication theory, but i t may provide a useful s tarting point on

which a more integrated communication theory can be built.

The construction of such theory i s the author's primary objective in forwarding this model for your comment and, hopefully, your response.